Undiscovered Scotland

 

It's not often a book drops through the letterbox that covers an aspect of life in Scotland that I know absolutely nothing about. Well, almost nothing. To the extent that surfing in Scotland makes it into the mainstream media, yes, I know it exists, however unlikely that may seem given typical Scottish sea temperatures. And I've been aware over the past couple of decades of the sport achieving a steadily growing profile here. But beyond probably clichéd mental images of big cold waves crashing on beautifully sandy Scottish beaches, I opened this book with the expectation of engaging with something both interesting and exciting.

And I wasn't disappointed. Far from it. "The View from the Shoulder: A Portrait of Scottish Surfing" by Roger Cox is a superb book for anyone wanting to understand what amounts to a way of life for many, and I suspect it will be equally compelling for all those who already subscribe to that way of life.

In his introduction, the author writes: "I first joined The Scotsman newspaper as a junior reporter in the summer of 2000 and officially I've worked on the arts desk ever since. Unofficially, though, I've also been writing about surfing for the paper since 2005." He goes on to say: "All the stories in the following pages first appeared in either The Scotsman or The Scotsman Magazine. The introductions have been freshly written to provide context and, where necessary, to explain what happened next."

The book is divided into five main sections, covering history, contests, freesurfing, culture, and, last but not least, "industry, innovation and activism". As you'd expect, given its origins, the content breaks down into article-sized chunks within those sections and the end result is a book that it's a joy either to browse or read in the order set out between the covers.

You get a fine idea of the range of content from the publisher's description of the book: "The story of surfing in Scotland is defined by people who dared to dream in spite of the cold, from Neva MacDonald-Haig and the coffin-lid surfers of Machrihanish, who first took to the waves off the west coast in the 1930s with a little help from a local undertaker, to Andy Bennetts and the pioneers of the 1960s, who discovered many of the nation's best breaks, to contemporary big wave surfer Ben Larg, a native of the tiny island of Tiree who now travels the world riding skyscraper-sized walls of water for a living."

It continues: "Scotland is also home to a rich and distinctive surfing culture, with its own surfboard shapers, surf instructors, surf filmmakers, surf photographers and surf fashion brands, not to mention surf-inspired artists and musicians. Professional contests held at some of Scotland's best waves have drawn visits from surfing world champions including Tom Curren, Sunny Garcia and John John Florence, and in recent years Scotland's own surfers have begun to make their presence felt on the competitive stage, with the Scottish surf team featuring at the World Surfing Games and at Eurosurf after finally gaining official recognition in 2014."