Riding the Waves of Time
Exploring Bournemouth’s forgotten surf legacy, from the lost waves of Hengistbury Head to the modern challenges and future opportunities for the sport. In conversation with British surfing legend Guy Penwarden, Tom Donaldson explores the history and what might lie ahead for Dorset's surf scene.
I’m sitting across from Guy Penwarden, British surfing legend, a former Great Britain and England team member, and Dorset local and we’re enjoying a surfers’ thought experiment. We’ve thrown our surfboards on the roof of the Delorean, set the date for 1900 and the location to Hengistbury Head. You’ve read that right: not Hawaii or Indonesia, and before the madding crowds. We’re heading to what we think would have once been one of Britain's best waves.
If we took a glance at the last 125 years on our way back to the future, we would have spotted the fluctuating fortunes of the 16km strip of sand west of Hengistbury. Thanks to its ongoing allure as a tourist destination, a number of decisions made for Bournemouth’s coastline in that time had unplanned consequences for local surfing, some beneficial and some not.
The first significant changes were the piers added to Bournemouth (1880) and Boscombe (1888). As good waves essentially result from bathymetrical or geological quirks – like inconsistencies in seafloor depth or coastal shape – the piers were actually a boon for surf quality. Acting as a barrier to the flow of sand from west to east along the beach, the piers serve as focal points to sculpt this sand into shapes more conducive to waves. Of course, those early decision-makers didn’t have surfing in mind when they commissioned the piers, they were just catering to the tourist tastes of their time. It would take another 80 years or so before dedicated surfers in the 1960s and 1970s would appreciate the fun little waves they found breaking on either side of the piers.
Groynes appeared soon after, first at Poole (1896) and then towards Bournemouth (1915). While the sediment capture of piers is incidental, it is the express purpose of groynes. Sand is trapped along the updrift side of groynes, increasing the width of the beach: a desirable outcome for a tourist destination on a coastline susceptible to erosion. Groynes have led to both the extraordinary improvement of some waves (Australia’s world-famous Kirra Point) and the destruction of others, most likely including Hengistbury Head. As Guy notes, the problem with groynes is that you are robbing Peter to pay Paul. The sand that is trapped in your groyne field isn’t making it down the coast, thereby exposing that coast to more erosion. In the case of Kirra Point, this sand loss exaggerated the depth differential between the deeper water and the coast where the swells finally broke giving rise to a wave that grew in muscle, catapulting surfers into the waves of their lives. Unfortunately, this was not the case for Hengistbury.
The Hengistbury long groyne construction in 1937-39 was the death knell for what would have been a long, thrilling ride between the head and down to the mouth of Christchurch Bay. The groyne choked the eastward drift of sand, starving the coastline immediately east of Hengistbury of sediment, and killing the wave. Without any sand to force swells to break and expend their energy - as seen beside the piers and along most coastal beaches - any swells would have just crashed right into the exposed coast, formless and destructive. Eventually, numerous smaller groynes were built along the eastern side of Hengistbury in the following decades and towards Highcliffe to capture any available sand and offset the effects of the larger Hengistbury groyne. These groynes, however, then blocked the path of any wave that would have tried to make a run for it again down to Mudeford. Again, many of these decisions were made before surfing had truly arrived on England’s shores and were done with coastal integrity in mind.
Now we get to the part of the story that (you think) you’re more familiar with: the Boscombe surf reef. It is a story with numerous characters, contesting public and private accounts, and few ultimate winners. The full story deserves far more space than available here, however, it is enough to share the following: it was not a success. Not as it was originally imagined, anyway, and unfortunately it somewhat tainted surfers locally as a stakeholder group…even though Mr Penwarden stepped away from the stakeholders’ committee during its consultancy stage as he felt the surfers’ opinions were not being taken seriously. Describing the reputational fallout for local surfers as a stakeholder group since the reef he said: “we are the leper of tourism”.
This all happened just before surfing’s popularity shot up in England during and after the pandemic. As surfing’s economic benefit to coastal communities is increasingly measured in the millions, Mr Penwarden took a proposal to BCP Council in 2019 to adjust the Hengistbury groyne for the purpose of resuscitating what he suspected was a lost legend. He argued that some minor design tweaks – a few degrees shift in angle, some shortening of its length – could both resurrect the old wave by allowing some sand to make it around the headland, while continuing to trap enough sand to protect the Bournemouth coast. As growing crowds jostle over limited waves at Bournemouth Pier, more wave options are needed, and Mr Penwarden proposed a way to achieve this. Sadly, his idea was rejected, despite academic backing of Plymouth coastal engineers in a commissioned report. Had the earlier reef project been executed to success, perhaps Mr Penwarden’s Hengistbury proposal would have stood a chance.
So surfing continues to grow in popularity, while the options remain limited to Bournemouth Pier (the wave quality at Boscombe Pier was dramatically reduced by the Pier’s shortening in the 1990s, and intermittent beach replenishment and dredging schemes). There are, however, new projects on the horizon, but not the kind at sea. Brocks Pine is a proposal for a wave pool at Avon Heath Country Park that would offer more reliable waves than this stretch of coastline ever could. Given the swelling popularity of watersports, future planners would be wise to consider the interests and expertise of this growing stakeholder group to avoid errors and instead optimise the surfing potential of the area in the years ahead… even if, ironically, that potential also lies inland.
