Yesterday was a 'five-star' day on the Severn Bore, meaning the biggest and longest wave(s) of the year would be beetling up said river thanks to the larger tides of the equinoctial period.

 These days such things attract hordes of 'surfers' for the bore is no longer the bizarre surf experience it once was - as you can tell from the newspaper pics of literally dozensof people riding it.

 Loads of longboards, crockfuls of canoes and kayaks, barrel loads of boogie boards - and a positive rash of 'surfers' who couldn't or weren't prepared to stand up on their boards.

So many people were on the bore that there wasn't room for everyone, and whilst I'm not suggesting that those who can't or won't stand up and surf properly shouldn't be allowed to surf it, perhaps real surfers should be given priority and allowed the first wave of the bore, and all the pseudo-surfers could take the next one.

Why? Well, apart from the understandable contempt of proper surfers for all those inferior breeds who choose not to stand up and be counted, there's the practical fact that maneouvering whilst standing on a board is harder and more likely to result in a wipeout than when you're sitting or lying down, so those who surf properly should get priority for having taken the time and effort to master the harder activity.

 Of course there's not a hope in hell that this will ever happen and the wannabe surfers who probably come here in coaches on organised trips (not having the nouse to work out things like tides and access points themselves) will continue to clog up the bore in years to come.

Just like they do on real waves in the summer...

The worrying times for freelancers continue. Last year I made the mistake of contributing a few articles and pics to a new website, Simonseeks.com (which rather disturbingly has just won some website of the year award - presumably awarded by an organisation that considers it perfectly legitimate for freelance travel writers to be paid next to nothing for their work).

The way the site worksis that you contribute material, for free, go through a tedious and time consuming editorial process to which no-one responds at Simonseeks, and eventually receive payment based on the number of hits your articles get.

Having some time to spare I thought I might as well give it a go - now I realise that was a waste of said spare time, having recently received £3.49 for my three features (well, I've requested it, haven't actually has it yet).

To be fair Simonseeks do advise quite clearly of their policy, but what it effectively amounts to is a situation where idiots like me populate their website for virtually nothing, they then get advertisers on board, and go on to win awards and no doubt develop a healthy bank balance on the back of the suckers who provide the material.

 And they clearly see nothing exploitative in this arrangement, actually boasting in a recent newsletter that some contributors are receiving as much as £40 a month. Whoop-de-doo!

I guess people like me only have ourselves to blame though. If we professionals simply left it to the amateurs and wannabes to provide copy for these sites they probaby wouldn't last too long; but in our continual desperation to make a living from writing we grasp at straws like this only to actually make things worse for everyone since the Internet now seems to be a happy hunting ground for websites keen to post material provided free or for next to nothing.

And what's worse, they seem to think there's nothing wrong in this whole situation. Well, I don't caer how Simonseeks tries to justify its policies, in my opinion they're simply exploiting people and from now on they can go and feckin seek somewhere else for work as far as I'm concerned.

Seriously, if you're a fellow writer, give these websites short shrift - in the long run they'll kill off the profession of real travel writing - and quite possibly many other types of writing too.

Last Saturday saw Hollywood come to West Wales - well, that's a lie actually, it was far better than Hollywood.

Theatr Mwldan in Cardigan saw the penultimate stop of the Banff Mountain Film Festival's UK tour, and a fine night of outdoor film action it was.

From free climbing to kayaking, powder skiing to mountain biking, we saw a collection of award winning films from the 2009Banff Mountain Film Festival that were variously inspirational, amusing and heartbreaking.

It also made me realise what a load of tinsel town dross comes out of Hollywood compared to the real lives of the people featured in these films - give me a shot of a man on a board or skis anyday as opposed to overpaid whiners like Mel Gibson (and even worse he's an Aussie....!).

Talking of film festivals, this is perhaps a pertinent point to bring to the attention of the two readers of this blog (and I'm one of them) news of the First St. David's Surf Film Festival, due to be held Oct 22-24 2010.

I'm one of the organisers of what we believe will be the first festival of its kind in the UK, and these are very early days as yet, but a full programme of events will appear in the fullness of time at www.surffilmfestival.co.uk

Book early to avoid disappointment!

I'm realistic enough to know that this blog receives about the same number of visits as Ian Brady, but for those of you who might be contemplating a career in freelance journalism, here's a tip - DON'T WRITE FOR NOWT!

Whilst rates for articles in the print media stagnate or even drop, there's an increasing tendency of the editors of many websites to offer payment based onlyon the number of hits your article receives (if any) - this effectively means you let them have a thousand words and several hours of your time and skill and receive what are never less than paltry returns months - maybe even years - after you've written your piece, based on the amount of traffic its generated and the honesty of the website owners in letting you know (cos there's no way you'll ever be able to find out for yourself).

Here's an example of what I mean:

The editor of the website Travel Intelligence wanted me to write a blog over the winter based on my forthcoming travels. Once it had all been agreed back came a message saying they wouldn't be able to pay altho I would receive royalties based on the amount of traffic my work generated.

I wrote back:

Hi Isabel,

At the risk of sounding like a money grabbing git I think I'll pass on it for now. I've made a decision not to work in future without receiving direct payment, as much on principle as anything else since it seems to be turning into a common feature of writing for websites these days.

I appreciate that I may make a little money in the long term but I would have to get a massive number of hits on my stuff to receive anything like the payment such an article/s would normally expect to receive in the print media, and to be honest I really don't have the time to work for what will probably be very little.

It's a peculiar aspect of web journalism isn't it? I can't think of any other profession that would operate on the same basis - it's a bit like telling a plumber "I can't pay you for the job but I'll let you have royalties based on the number of showers I have"!!

Best wishes

Alf

I really don't understand where these people are coming from in expecting experienced and professional writers to work on this basis. Sure, if you're making a start in the business its a chance to get your work published but even then why work for next to nothing?

Your writing would have to be something very, very special to get noticed out there in the infinite universe of the interweb and it's highly unlikely to generate much more work for you, and even less so any real income.

I'm probably swimming against the current but bollocks to the lot of them, I ain't working for free and from now in every time I'm asked the bugger who did the questioning will be getting a two word response.

I recently sent a feature proposal to the editor of a Swiss based internet mag that goes by the awful title of 'Gatsby Magazine'. It's aimed at the kind of high flyers who wear too much jewellery and appear to have bodies made of soft matte plastic so I thought there might be some money in writing for it - mistakenly it seems as readingbetween the lines it seems it may be going under.

Should this be the case I dare say the world of internet publishing will survive its demise...

Anyway, I asked if they'd be interested in a piece on surfing in the Maldives, to which I received the reply '...crisis has hit and the Maldives are going under, so it's not of interest to us. We are not currently commissioning anyone.'

My incredibly witty response was 'Thanks Stefan - I think it will be a few years yet before the Maldives sink mate! You're the first editor I've come across who has turned down a travel story because the place in question is about to sink. Excellent! Cheers. Alf'.

Back came the polite but stinging response 'If you read my email again you may get the irony... As I said, we are not currently in a position to commission anyone. There is no reason to get snappy. Please don't contact us again. Best regards etc.'

Imagine my horror at discovering I could no longer detect irony when it spat in my face. And even worse, my puerile response, to the effect that a lack of a sense of humour was only to be expected from someone of Swiss background was met with the terse remark 'I'm Brazilian. Goodbye'.

So, that's me put in my place.

Don't bother reading the mag tho', it's full of pretentious tosh - when you can actually access it. Oh, go on then, find out for yourself - www.gatsbymagazine.com

Football - the beautiful game...

 My arse. And here's why:

I'm planning a reunion weekend in Sheffield with a couple of old (in every sense of the word) mates. We all went to uni there and thought we could re-enact old times with a visit to Sheffield United FC as they pit their dubious skills against QPR, followed by a gallon or so of ale and a curry.

One could reasonablyask if a finer day out is known to mankind? I think not.

However, this simple plan has to date been foiled at every turn by SUFC. I've tried booking tickets for the game online and by phone and the online system don't work (and there would be charge of £1 for each booking despite the fact that the punter has done all the feckin' work), whilst the premium rate phone line has you waiting for a small eternity before some woman comes on and says tickets aren't yet available for the game, even though it's less than a month away. And when they are it'll cost you a quid for the privilege of using a premium rate phone line to book them.

As I politely informed the unfortunate woman on the other end of the phone, "It's no bloody wonder you don't have any fans!".

This is, of course, of a piece with English football's never ending attempt to wrest every penny out of the poor saps who choose to watch it. And yet we put up with it all, for I'll be trying again in a few days to book those bloody tickets - for the fifth time.

Bit it's this kind of contempt for the people who keep the sport alive that saw me abandon footie long ago for surfing, skiing and mountaineering - at least Nature doesn't charge for the waves and mountains. Well, not in cash, anyway.

According to a press release I received today Galloway Forest Park in SW Scotland has just received a 'Dark Sky Award' from the International Dark Sky Association (no, me neither...) for the - well, as you might guess, for the darkness of its skies.

This makes the new 'Dark Sky Park' a prime spot for star gazing, and with so much of the UK suffering serious 'lightpollution' this is of course a GOOD THING; apparently less than 10 per cent of the country's population can see the Milky Way from where they live, paartly because we're such a nation of terrified milksops that we need to have street lights along every road and lane in the country.

But I disgress. It seems that Galloway is one of only four Dark Sky Parks in the world - the Natural Bridges National Monument in Utah, the Cherry Springs State Park in Pennsylvania and the Geauga Park in Ohio.

Two things occur to the cynic in me - first, there must surely be a vast number of other spots in the world where one can view the Milky Way with ease; and far all its new found fame surely Galloway suffers a serious disadvantage, especially when compared to Utah - isn't it one of the cloudiest, wettest places in the world?

Which may be one reason its so dark...

I'm part way through Roger Mansfield's fascinating book ‘The Surfing Tribe', a history of surfing in Britain, which I'd recommend for both the words and pics, but I have noticed that the book brings out an interesting and unexpected similarity between Cornwall and London.

London, of course, sees itself - particularly the media that are based there - as being representativeof wider Britain, which is clearly nonsense but nonetheless true. As an example I once checked the content of The Guardian's 16-page G2 section to find that the stories within ran to a 66-33 per cent split between London and the rest of the country, even though this is a ‘national' newspaper with its (long forgotten) roots in Manchester.

Likewise, Cornwall seems to see itself as being representative of British surfing to judge from much of what I've read so far in ‘The Surfing Tribe'. It's true that no area has had as much influence on UK surfing as Cornwall, but on a purely personal note I was more than a little piqued to discover that my own base here in Pembrokeshire merited less than half a page in the entire history of surfing in Britain - even less then North Wales and Cardigan Bay despite the fact that people have been surfing here since the mid-sixties (at least) and we have far better surf than either of the above named locations.

None of the established locals from the 70s and 80s - the Harvatt brothers, Chris Payne, Rod Thomas, Robin Copley, Reg Goddard, the Kitchell brothers, the Simes (and one of the oldest surf shops in Wales, Ma Simes), Andy Middleton of TyF Adventure and a host of other merited a mention either.

But then I considered again and realised that was actually pretty good news. Because it means that Pembrokeshire really has remained a surfing backwater when even esteemed individuals such as Roger Mansfield and co-writer and all-round good bloke Sam Bleakley have so little cognisance of its existence.

And being a backwater means we avoid all the excesses of Newquay and Bournemouth (see previous blog) which can only be a GOOD THING!

Fame beckons - after writing this I'm off to be interviewed for BBC Radio Four's ‘You and Yours' programme (Mon 19 Oct Mid-day since you ask) on the conundrum of Bournemouth's surf reef and the impact it may have on Britain's self-styled surf city Newquay.

Now assuming the reef is ever finished there are some who say it will attract surfers away from Newquayto Bournemouth and who feel that Newquay's surf business owners are being somewhat complacent in the face of this potential ‘threat'.

In my opinion there are a number of factors to consider here. First, anyone who chooses to travel to either Newquay or Bournemouth to surf is either desperate or not a ‘real' surfer. What ‘real' surfer would want to travel hundreds of miles (or even ten miles) for a weekend surfing Newquay's overcrowded, overhyped waves and then endure an evening in the piss stinking streets avoiding binge drinking morons, fat lasses and fights to finish it all off with a night in some pseudo surf lodge (the last time I stayed in Newquay was to review one of these places for The Guardian - it was so crap I bailed out at 10.30pm and went back to sleep in my camper near Watergate Bay)?

On the other hand, what ‘real' surfer would want to travel tens of miles (because let's face it, we're looking primarily at the London crowd here) to Bournemouth's pseudo surf beach with its designer beach huts and surf boutiques to ride an overcrowded wave that with the best will in the world will rarely ever be anything other than mediocre? I hope I'm wrong on this fact since over a million quid has been invested on the new reef, but for any reef to work you have to have decent, consistent swell and wave conditions and Bournemouth has neither.

Which leads us on to point two - the fact that both destinations are likely to attract the lowest form of surfing life, the surfer wannabe who cares more about image than wave riding. Newquay long ago sold its soul in return for their cash, and Bournemouth is well down the road to doing the same.

And that brings us neatly on to the final point; bearing all the above in mind, what ‘real' surfer (by which I mean those of us who do our best to avoid the crowds when we're on surfari and as such keep away from surf ghettos like Newquay and designer surf outlets like Bournemouth) really cares?

I wouldn't like to see anyone's business go under in Newquay as a result of Bournemouth's new role in Britain's surfing life, and I really do hope that the new reef creates great designer waves for the designer surfers who will visit it, but at the end of the day, like most British surfers I don't really care.

I do feel grateful that I'm not a local in either town though...

Apparently the more a writer blogs the more chance their is of their blog/website coming up in search results.

The only trouble is it seems that the more a writer blogs the less they have to say. It's a bit like the Facebook/Twitter conundrum - the more time you spend telling people what you're about to do/have done the less time you have to actually do it.

So I'm off todo something - although I'm not sure what.