What is it about the agony and ecstasy of a windsurfing road trip that makes it such a quintessential part of our sport? It’s a weirdly alluring combination of pleasure and pain, (with usually more emphasis on the pain) where you leave your comfort zone at home and head out in search of adventure. John Carter muses on the pros and cons of road tripping in the company of Timo Mullen, James Cox and Jamie Hancock as they venture to NW Ireland in the name of research as to what makes the perfect road trip.
JOHN CARTER
Lured by a forecast promising sun, wind and waves; myself, Timo Mullen, Jamie Hancock and James Cox gathered in Poole late on a mid-winter Thursday afternoon, travelled overnight to Dublin and then spent the next two days on the road in the hunt for perfect wave sailing conditions. Yep this was a self-rewarded lads Xmas outing where the only presents involved were gifted by Mother Nature and the messiah who invented Guinness!
We’d seen the forecast brewing the previous weekend, a classic dartboard low, perfect for conjuring up a smorgasbord of Atlantic swell all set to bash the northwest coast. To be fair Gwithian in Cornwall also looked pretty tasty on the Friday but weirdly, we were drawn by a larger scale undertaking, involving ferries, Irish reefs and the desire to explore.
The allure of a road trip was one of my main motivations to join the lads on this sojourn to Ireland. Had the crew been sailing on the South Coast perhaps the same appeal would not have been there to spend three days with the boys. Obviously we all love our families and partners but once in a while a good old-fashioned ‘lads’ trip with all the banter involved is a breath of fresh air and breaks the mould from our everyday grind at home. Not to mention the fact that most locations on the Motley radar just happen to be some of the most stunning stretches of coastline on the planet.
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