WEIRD WAVES

ONE OF THE SIGNIFICANT CHANGES IN THE 25 YEARS OF CARVE IS THE OPENING UP OF SURFING BEYOND THE OCEAN. SURFERS WILL TAKE A SLIDE ANYWHERE THEY CAN IF DESPERATE ENOUGH.

- SHARPY

Once upon a time, the received wisdom was if you wanted to surf a novelty wave, that wasn't an ocean-going roller, you had to head to Gloucestershire and hit the Severn Bore on your biggest, thickest, barge of a board. The tidal bore of great repute powers up the river on the biggest spring tides letting surfers ride for miles. Assuming they can dodge the dead sheep, trees, fridges and assorted other semi-submerged detritus lying in wait. The history of the Bore crew rolls deep, but it's been ridden since Colonel Jack Churchill had the first pop in 1955.

These days you're spoilt for choice when it comes to non-salty surfing. Bore waves are surfed all over the world with notable ones in France, Canada, Brazil and Indonesia. Static river surfing, as pioneered on the Eisbach in Munich, is to be found wherever there's what the kayak sorts call a standing wave. The Zambezi in Africa has a great one that's sadly under threat from a hydro scheme. There are scores all over the world suitable for a wiggle. There's also the ephemeral, mega-crowded, Waimea beach one, which occurs when the stinky lagoon behind the beach gets too full of runoff, and the locals unleash it by digging a trench in the beach. It's a shred fest, but you'll need to sink a big bottle of Coke after to nuke the bugs.

Freshwater fun in nature is one thing, but the drive to ride alternative waves goes back even further. The recent obsession with wave pools has a longer history than you might think.

The story of wave pools pre-dates their use for surfing by a century, but you can be sure as soon as engineers made a wave in a pool a surfer was looking at it wondering about the possibilities.

The short version:

The late 1800s: King Ludwig, an eccentric young Bavarian chap, had a wave pool in one of his castles in Germany. It's not known if he shredded the gnar.