What to do during the the winter when you’re a wakeboarder living in England??

In the UK, only a few people brave the icy waters to wakeboard throughout the winter.  No matter how much you love it, no matter how good your wettie is or how thick your gloves are, you just can’t last as long as you want to.  This sucks for those of us who can’t get away for a couple of months to warmer climates..

I was thinking of ways to keep fit and have fun throughout the gloomy months, and also who would be up for trying some new sport.  So the group of WakeGirlsGo.. consists of Sarah Kingdom, Steph Caller, Tor Young, Jules Haley, Sophie Cordrey and Jo Andrews, which is a cracking group as we spend most of our time hurting from laughter!

I love surfing, so I wanted to see what the girls thought of my other passion.  The group of us headed to the Londoners ‘local’ Croyde where we had our own cottage for the weekend!  Surfing Croyde Bay surf school were amazing and got the girls up on their boards and turning over the two days.  We tried proper Devon cream teas with homemade scones and clotted cream, we got involved with Nalu Beads who held a workshop for us, and we also got to meet photographer Rob Tibbles who was with us for the weekend to capture some classic moments.

We all wakeboard a lot so we are used to a beating or two, but the morning after the first surf they were aching a fair amount!  Surfing works different muscles in your body, and the only way to keep and build these particular muscles is to actually surf.  Forget the aches though, I asked the girls if they enjoyed surfing and they loved it so much they want to keep going and do it when they can’t wakeboard.  Win!

The next sport we tried was one of Stephs.  Flow Riding.  Stephs has done this before as she rides for Animal who is also in association with the Flow House in Bedford.  She hooked us up with a weekend of flowriding!  We turned up on Saturday evening for our lesson and got straight to it.  It is hard!  We were stacking all over the place, mostly due to laughing too much.  Its such a weird feeling, its not exactly the same as any other board sport, but more like surfing than it is wakeboarding or snowboarding I thought.  By day two we were all getting on better, standing for longer, dropping in from the top, doing 360 spins and little ollies, but still crashing a fair amount.  Steph was rocking it putting in some bigger turns by this time as well.  When Monday morning came around, my body hurt like hell, when you’re learning how to flowride, its definitely a work out!