News: 2011 World Bellyboarding champion crowned

added to the website on Sep 05, 2011

Naomi Perkin from St Ives won the 9th annual World Bellyboarding Championships at Chapel Porth in Cornwall yesterday. The contest, organised by our friends at The National Trust, is a celebration of the traditional art of surf riding – surfing prone on a short wooden bodyboard. It now attracts a truly international field of entrants ……»


Print: Bude guide 1967

added to the website on Dec 04, 2010

1967 holiday guide for Bude on the north Cornwall coast, describing it as a “surfing resort” with a photo on the cover showing a woman joyously holding her traditional wooden bellyboard aloft. Lots of surfing content inside, with the town and its businesses really trying to attract surfers in the mid 1960s.


News: 8th World Bellyboard Champion crowned

added to the website on Sep 06, 2010

The skies may have been leaden, the rain driving, but the main ingredients of pumping waves and stoked competitors kept the chill at bay and delivered a truly wonderful & typically British seaside day of surf and smiles. Jack Johns wowed the crowd with his accomplished ply riding to be crowned 8th World Bellyboard Champion ……»


Memorabilia: Skewjack t-shirt 1978

added to the website on Jun 02, 2010

In the 1970s ‘crop-sleeved’ tops and vests were all the rage – here Nick Paden (Yorkshire, England) has created a home made version with his Skewjack surf camp t-shirt from the late 1970s.


Print: Bilbo bag 1969

added to the website on Jun 01, 2010

Bilbo surf shop paper bag (Newquay, Cornwall) c1969.


Photographs: Pip Staffieri 1937

added to the website on Jun 01, 2010

Pip Staffieri was a diminutive ice cream seller who lived in Newquay, Cornwall before World War 2. He made his own 13 foot hollow wooden surfboard in the late 1930s after seeing a photo in an encyclopedia. Pip would wheel it down to the waters edge on an old pram that he cut in half. ……»


Wax & Leashes: Gul 1970

added to the website on May 26, 2010

A bar of surfboard wax, supplied by Gul in Cornwall in the 1970s.