🏄 Surfing - the most difficult board sport 🏄

HOP ON A BOARD!

Famous surfing places in Europe

Surfing is a surface water pastime in which the wave rider, referred to as a surfer, rides on the forward part, or face, of a moving wave, which usually carries the surfer towards the shore.

Waves suitable for surfing are primarily found in the ocean, but can also be found in lakes or rivers in the form of a standing wave or tidal bore. However, surfers can also utilize artificial waves such as those from boat wakes and the waves created in artificial wave pools.

Let's get back to the roots

A long time ago in ancient Polynesia: latter-day Tahiti, perhaps; maybe Samoa or Tonga – or perhaps much further north by the dusky shores of ancient Hawaii – locals gazed at the raging whitewash lapping upon their island sands.

Swimming, until then, had been the main pastime, but now they paddled into the ocean with planks of their finest wood, and with zest and zeal, began to take turns riding fiercely down the barrels of untamed swells and building sets.

Over the centuries, our forebears started to turn the stoke up, mastering the art of riding these planks – the ancient Hawaiians soon turned surfing into a sacred part of their culture, praying to the gods for strength and protection with every heʻe nalu, or ‘wave sliding’ session.

Of course, the ancient world eventually gave way to the modern – and surfing came along for the ride.

We shift the scene here to the late decades of the 19th Century, on Honolulu’s Waikiki Beach: wealthy American tourists, entranced by the sight of locals charging down waves on their self-fashioned boards. Around the same time, a trio of touring Hawaiian princes were showing off their skills to local Californians, equally mystified by their skills. Writers Mark Twain and Jack London caught word of this new sport ‘surfing’; both tried, and failed. But word spread, as surfing began to take root in the Western imagination.