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Report from the Bitches Soul Festival 2002

Snowy blunting hard Short summary of the "Bitches Soul Festival", a fun event that took place on April 25-28 in Wales (UK). This report contains a video clip of the mighty top wave at the Bitches in Quicktime format.

The Bitches are a series of rocks between the Welsh Coast and Ramsey Island in Pembroke (Wales, UK) that form one of the best waves in the UK when the tide and the weather are spot on. For those of you who are not familiar with the spot, please have a look at the PLAYAK description. In the right conditions, this spot is really magic, maybe because it is so remote and the ferry glide is so tiring that the people who make it really deserve to play.

Well, Tim and I arrived up there around lunch time on the 26th. High tide was at 6.45pm so we had loads of time to outfit the two S8s that Pyranha brought for us for the occasion (watch this space for a review within a couple of weeks). We found out later on that the organisers had booked seats for PLAYAK on the power boat for taking pictures and video footage. After much deliberation it was decided that Tim would spend the time in the power boat (lucky him ;-) and I would paddle there and get some video footage from one of the rocks.

Mike Abbot, Bob Campbell and Allan Ellard

After a quick safety briefing, the crowd gathered in St Justinian for the ferry glide to the playspot. The car park was looking good with some paddling celebrities around: Allan Ellard and Mike Abbot back from their Tsangpo expedition, Debs Pinneger and Olaf Obsommer filming for the BBC to name but a few. The ferryglide to the playspot was a long and tiring paddle as it was a 7.3 metre tide (read BIG). There was quite a lot of swell which made the crossing interesting and the eddy was a bit sketchy for the first-timers. We paddled for a good 3 hours, everybody had a good time and arrived exhausted in St Justininan after the ferry glide back home.

Snowy, big blunt

Describing the atmosphere up there is quite hard so you might just watch the video clip we created of the friday wave session to get an idea of what "bitching" is all about. The clip is available in 3 sizes depending on your internet connection:

All video clips in Quicktime format. Get the free player here if you haven't got it yet. Note that the swell makes the wave change all the time... I hope Olaf and Debs got some good footage for their BBC program.

Bob, Mike, Allan

Friday evening was spent watching videos, coming back to the epics of the afternoon and just having a good time. Saturday was meant to be "competition" day. However, because the tide was at 7.30pm, we had to wait until 3.00pm before getting into paddling kit. Some went surfing, some prefered to stay on the campsite where the organiser had planned some fun games such as tug o' war or volley ball. The weather forecast looked like the ferry glide in the afternoon would be a little bit hairy with gale force winds going with the tide planned in the channel in late afternoon. Eventually, the power boat people decided to call it a day and refused to do the safety cover for the event. The wave contest was then cancelled at the last second. Some people moved to Whitesand bay for some surfing, some decided to give it a go and paddle out to the Bitches despite the bad weather conditions. The comments in the pub in the evening were something along the lines of "Was it really worth it?" ...

Allan Ellard

Well, it was party time again and Paul "Cheesy" Robertson started getting busy. He was a brilliant DJ and the party really made it for the bad weather conditions.

Because there had to be a fun contest, the organisers decided to hold a surf competition at Whitesand bay on the sunday morning. This was a soul competition, no rules and a very subjective judging for some very subjectives prices like best trick, best wipe out, most consistent trashings or most friendly... Quite amusing really.

As a conclusion I would like to thank the organisation team for the week-end. It is a shame that the weather conditions were not better because even more people would have turned up but I am sure that most people enjoyed their week-end. It is good to organise an event where peiople can paddle more than their "two 45 second runs" and I am convinced that it will be a winner next year !

Report by JP Renaud for PLAYAK.COM. May 2 2002.

All pictures on this page by Tim Sadler.

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Sponsors of the Bitches Soul Festival:

Pyranha Pyranha Twyr-Y-Felin

Surfrider Foundation
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