Following up on our surf session at Gullane last weekend 11 of us met at 8am on a Sunday morning at the Lost Shore surf resort near Ratho. This was the culmination of talks between David Simpson and Chris Heaney and Lost Shore management. It was a unique opportunity to bring kayaks into an artificial surf centre. This has taken months of negotiation and to date there have only been 4 kayak sessions at Lost Shore since it opened in autumn 2024. There were 2 more sessions last Sunday and LSKC had the first session from 9 to 10am. We relished every second!
We did not know what to expect. The Lost Shore facility can generate artificial waves of varying height including barrel waves. When we got there we saw some board surfers surfing in these barrel waves. I started to get nervous and wondered what we had let ourselves in for! The facility itself had 2 triangular pools so can accommodate 2 groups at the same time. We were in one of the pools. The waves are generated in the apex of the triangle and immediately create large, steep waves. They break from the side as they approach the ‘beach’ at the wider end of the triangle. Unlike normal beaches the beach is made of concrete rather than sand! The waves come down one side of the triangle from the apex and the water circulates back up the other side. This provided a natural flow of paddlers into the waves, surfing and back up the opposite side. The waves themselves come in sets of several waves with pauses before starting again. This is all controlled by wave generating machinery hidden from sight. All we saw was the first wave coming from the apex and very quickly developing into very steep waves. As soon as we saw the next set of waves coming we started numbering off 1,2,3,4… to take the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th wave etc. We tried to maintain this discipline to try and create a bit of order and to give each other space.
It was incredible fun, though with 11 of us it got a bit crowded at times! We just had to wait and take it in turns. The waves were very big and very steep and provided quite a few capsizes and rolls. It was amazing there were no bad collisions with us all desperate to get on the waves. Highlights were the fantastic fun we had surfing though I have to mention swims from David Simpson and Ken McIlroy! Admittedly they were in hard to roll surf kayaks but it was fun watching them swim since that does not happen often.
Chris Heaney and Colin Coupar were absolutely fantastic in providing advice and coaching us. Colin was giving me feedback after my runs and hopefully I learnt a bit and improved my surf technique though by the end of the hour I was pretty tired and making mistakes. Surf kayaking is difficult though tremendous fun. We were in a mix of surf kayaks and river kayaks. It has fuelled my interest in surf kayaking and I would love to master the top turns and bottom turns we saw on display in the 2nd kayak session at 11am after our own session. I think we all felt this.
Thanks so much to David Simpson who organised this event with Chris Heaney. You might have seen that Chris Heaney was voted Paddle Scotland Volunteer of the Year. Well deserved! I think we need to try and make this a regular outing.