Scottish Surfing to mark its 50th by looking to past and future at Lost Shore
This year’s Gathering of the Clans event will see the best surfers from clubs around the country battle for honours at Lost Shore while also providing an opportunity to mark 50 years of Scottish Surfing, writes Roger Cox
The final weekend of this month is shaping up to be a busy one at the Lost Shore surf resort just outside Edinburgh, as it prepares to host both the 2025 Gathering of the Clans club competition and also the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Scottish Surfing Federation, recently renamed Scottish Surfing. The folks at Civerinos Pizza will doubtless be ordering in a few extra truckloads of pepperoni for the occasion, the guys at Lost Tacos will be cooking industrial quantities of birria and – most importantly of all – Lost Shore’s wave pool wizards will be getting ready to serve up an unlimited supply of perfect waves, as some of the best surfers in Scotland do battle for points, prizes and regional pride.
The Gathering of the Clans event was established in 2005, so is itself celebrating a significant birthday this year, and it aims to bring surf clubs from all around the country together in a good-natured team competition. Each club can enter between six and eight competitors, with a maximum of two each in the Open Men’s and Open Women’s categories, plus one each in the Boys, Girls, Masters (40+) and Longboard divisions. The club with the best aggregate score across all categories is declared the winner.
Last November, when the Clans took place at the then newly-opened Lost Shore, it was the first time a surf contest had ever been held at an artificial wave pool in Scotland. The North Coast Surf Club were strong favourites, having won the Clans title for the last six years in a row, but they were narrowly defeated by the Broch Surf Club (that’s “Broch” as in Fraserburgh, for those living south of the Highland Line) thanks in no small part to the young Cruikshank siblings, Callie and Kai, who finished first and second in the Girls and Boys divisions respectively. With Tiree Surf Club and Belhaven Surf Club also putting in strong showings in third and fourth, the Clans now feels like anything but a foregone conclusion.
This year’s contest will take place from 8am to 4pm on Saturday 29 November. Ordinarily trying to host an event on this scale in a single day – particularly at a time of year when daylight is limited – would be a logistical nightmare, as at a conventional surf spot wind, tide and swell can rarely be relied on to provide optimal conditions all day long. At Lost Shore, however – as the Clans proved last year – with perfect waves on tap everything can be run with military precision. That’s not just good news for competitors, but also for spectators, who don’t have to worry about making the journey all the way to the contest site only to discover that the event’s been postponed or cancelled due to too much wind/not enough swell/an unfavourable tide/a combination of the above. Everything should be nice and predictable on the day – everything apart from the final result, of course, which these days seems anything but.
Running in tandem with the Clans competition, there will also be various events taking place over the weekend to mark the 50th anniversary of Scottish Surfing, the sport’s governing body. From noon on Friday 28th there will be surf photography on display from some of the best contemporary snappers in the business, curated by the folks at Staunch Industries, and also a photographic trip down memory lane courtesy of Scottish surfing pioneer Andy Bennetts. As he’s been surfing and taking surf pictures in Scotland since the sport first took hold here in the 60s, the Bennetts archive is a real treasure trove, so it will be a treat to see a selection of these gems on display. The question is though: which gems? Some pre-wetsuits-era 1960s classics? Perhaps some featuring psychedelic experimental surfboards from the 1970s? Or how about some dreamy surf exploration shots from the 1980s? If we’re lucky we might get all of the above.
There will also be a ceilidh on the Saturday night, starting at 7pm, for those with any energy left after the day’s competition, and on the Friday night, from 7:30pm, there will be a chance to hear a multi-generational panel of Scottish surfers – including Bennetts and many-times Scottish National Surfing Championships winners Mark Boyd and Phoebe Strachan – discussing both where Scottish surfing has been, and where it might go in go in the future.
Speaking of the future, Scottish Surfing’s CEO Paul Stark is keen to use the organisation’s 50th as an opportunity to look forwards as well as back.
“One of the things we’re looking at is not just to celebrate the last 50 years but also to create traditions,” he says. To this end, Stark wants to “recognise all of the Scottish champions of the last 50 years”, although details of how exactly this will be done are being kept under wraps.
In addition, he would also like to introduce a system whereby surfers gain official recognition for representing their country. “At the moment, we don’t really recognise anyone when they compete for Scotland,” he says, “so we’re going to look at something like a cap – not a cap, but some form of official recognition, so from now on all the people who represent Scotland are recognised accordingly.”
For more information on The Gathering of the Clans 2025 and Scottish Surfing, visit www.scottishsurfing.scot
Want the latest Scottish headlines sent directly to your phone? Sign up to our new WhatsApp channel here.
Comments
Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.