Welcome to St Andrews, Fife’s answer to Bondi Beach
Thirty years ago there were just a few hardy souls surfing in St Andrews, but now there’s a whole community and even a cafe selling surf souvenirs, writes Roger Cox
September 1996, and a skinny 18-year-old student with a large, overstuffed rucksack on his back and a surfboard under his arm is walking along Golf Place in St Andrews. He pauses in front of an imposing five-storey red sandstone building with a large grey dome on top, formerly the St Andrews Grand Hotel, now Hamilton Hall, a student hall of residence. This will be his home for the next nine months. He takes a deep breath, grips the surfboard more tightly, and walks through the front door.
Inside in the foyer there is a welcome desk where he is handed a key and told that his room is on the first floor. It’s busy, with groups of students and parents milling around, and he feels suddenly self-conscious lugging a six-foot-three-inch-long slab of foam and fibreglass around, so he puts his head down and climbs the wide, grand staircase, doing his best to blend in with the wallpaper.
When he was applying for university accommodation, the student had been advised to tick the “happy to share a room” box. Apparently if you’re OK to share you have a better chance of getting a place in one of the older halls of residence, and most of the older halls are close to the beach. Any of the town centre halls would’ve done, St Andrews not exactly being a sprawling metropolis, but with Hamilton – about a minute-and-a-half’s stroll from the mellow beachbreak waves of West Sands – he figures he’s struck gold.
Arriving at the first floor, he makes his way along a corridor until he reaches room number seven. Unsure if his new roommate is already there or not, he tries knocking; then, as there’s no answer, he lets himself in. The room is empty apart from all the things you’d expect – two beds, two desks, two wardrobes. The student isn’t really taking any of this in, though, because his eyes are immediately drawn to the enormous bay window at the far end of the room.
The view straight out, looking west, is of the 18th hole of the Old Course – a sight that would fill any golf fan with joy. The student isn’t a golfer, however, and his attention is drawn instead to the right-hand third of the window through which – yes – framed between the Royal and Ancient on the left and the British Golf Museum on the right, there is a perfect view of the waves breaking at West Sands. Better still, just outside the window there appears to be a small balcony. The realisation that he will be able to check the surf every morning from his own balcony causes the student to punch the air in delight. Then, getting a grip, he heaves up the heavy sash window and steps out into the cool evening air...
That student, reader, was me, and during my four years at St Andrews I found time for many memorable surfs in between lectures. In those days, however, surfing was still the nichest of niche pastimes. I clearly remember people looking at me as if I was some sort of alien as I padded up and down to the beach in my wetsuit, not to mention the disapproving looks from golfers when I took a quick post-surf shower under the sprinklers on the Old Course. I’m not sure if the membership of the university surf club ever hit double figures in all the time I was there, and I only really remember three other regulars in the water: John, Will and Barry. When I left in the summer of 2000, St Andrews still felt very much like a place where the tiny handful of local surfers barely registered on the civic consciousness, and there was no indication that that was ever likely to change.
Fast-forward to last weekend, however – my first surf at St Andrews in at least two decades, possibly two-and-a-half – and I was walking around the place slack-jawed like Marty McFly in Back to the Future 2. Relatively speaking, the place felt like Bondi Beach.
For a start, the waves were as good as I’d ever seen them in my student days – beautiful three-to-four-foot peelers fanned by just a hint of an offshore breeze. What really made my jaw hit the floor, though, was the number of people in the water. The peak nearest the town was hosting a group from surf therapy charity the Wave Project as well as at least one surf school – there were perhaps 25 or 30 surfers in the water in this one area alone. The next peak along the beach looked quieter, with perhaps eight or ten people out, so I paddled out to join them. As well as a couple of longboarders, there were stand-up paddle-boarders, a couple of surf kayakers and two more guys buzzing around outside on foils. The next peak to the north seemed to have a similar-sized pack, and I could make out a few more dots up towards the far north end of the beach. All told, there were about ten times more surfers in the water than on a good day in 1996.
More than the number of people in the water, though, it was the infrastructure that blew my mind. Not only is there now a lifeguard tower (a lifeguard tower!) but also a permanent surf school, appropriately named Blown Away. Heck, there’s even a sauna nearby to warm up in after icy winter surfs. Best of all, though, is the Dook cafe. Their logo? A cup of coffee with a surfer in a full winter wetsuit sitting inside it, his single-fin surfboard half-immersed alongside him. St Andrews may not have been a surf town in 1996, but if it’s got a surf-side cafe selling surf-themed souvenirs, it’s sure as heck a surf town now.
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