Newquay Boardmasters Surf Skate and Music Festival 2009

Huge crowds turned out for the Annual Surfing and Skate Festival on Fistral Beach Newquay. The Festival organizers got wind of some bad surfing weather approaching for the climax of the week so the Final Surf competition took place on the Friday. Australian Dan Ross was the overall Boardmasters Champion.
While there was plenty of surf action going on I was also able to watch some of the skaters and bikers, managing to get quite a few good shots. There was plenty of stalls to look over with some of the competition surfers signing posters, t-shirts and dvd's.
There always seems to be a party atmosphere during Boardmasters week but Newquay was in the news for all the wrong reasons last Summer. Local residents were up in arms over the town's underage youth drinking problem.
Every Summer during July many students from all over the U.K head off to Newquay to party, having just finished their College Exams. The trouble is that most of the students are all under the legal age to be served alcohol. But somehow they manage to get hold of it, be it from the town's supermarkets, or by somehow blagging their way into the Bars with fake id's.

Many of the party goers take off in the early hours to the beach cliff edge where there isn't always safe fencing. There they carry on drinking and partying. Sadly two teenagers fell to their death's last Summer while another fell down the cliff and broke his neck.

One evening when we returned from Fistral Beach the local High street seemed more active than usual. It was in fact a group of about sixty senior residents of Newquay out protesting over the town's binge drinking problem. Also there was the reporter for BBC Spotlight. I managed to get a few photos some of which you can see further on. Unfortunately Blogger has now restricted the number of postings per page so those pics will be further along.

It'll be interesting to see what might happen this coming Summer in Britain's party town now that the Newquay Police have launched a new policy called Challenge 21. This means that if someone appears to look under 21 then they will have to produce legitimate proof of their age.

Deejohn.

Skaters

Bikers

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