I’m not quite sure how to describe the surf scene in Scarborough, it’s unlike many other places I think. The scene in Scarborough mainly consists in the water, the same faces will be surfing the same spots when there’s a wave there. Outside of that it’s the occasional Secret Spot organised surf night (www.secretspot.co.uk) or long chat with Steve and Mark at Fluid Concept (www.fluidconcept.co.uk) or congregating on the North Bay early morning looking at a flat sea because that swell never arrived. It’s temperamental here, a swell can last one evening, it can blow flat within minutes and you hold your head in shame as you walk out of a flat sea. It can also be absolutely perfect, some well travelled locals say it’s world class here on occasion, and I think slowly the secret is getting out…

A weekend trip to Scarborough isn’t the chips and ice-cream affair of the past, nowadays it’s a drop by a hire shop, get a board and a wetty and spend four hours splashing around in the north or south bay kind of place, something we as surfers are all having to accept. We have to accept that more and more people are taking up surfing and look at the advantages it brings to us rather than the disadvantages. Yes, we’ll have to start abiding by the rules of surfing, we’ll have to look out for learners in the line up and we’ll have to accept that people will be in our way sometimes but also these people probably mean that Carl can keep doing a job that he loves (Bay Area Surf) and Mark can keep shaping beautiful boards for us all (Fluid Concept).

So for all those times we fight our way through 60 people in the north bay on a weekend there’s the times we surf it as the sun comes up with 3 other people out mid-week. In the end, it’s all surfing whether there’s 2 of you or 202, there’s loads of waves round here, enough for everyone to enjoy. There’s waves right now in fact…