Stage 1 — The Beginning
Casual look back at Trevaunance Cove
It all started at Trevaunance Cove — and it had nothing to do with surf travel
Before Bali. Before the Maldives. Before the Mentawai Islands. There was a three-year-old in a too-big wetsuit, falling off a foamie in the whitewash, coming up every time with the biggest smile you've ever seen.
Most surf travel blogs start with an exotic destination. A perfect barrel. A boat trip somewhere with no name on a map. This one starts in Cornwall, in a cove you've probably never heard of, in water that was almost certainly too cold.
Trevaunance Cove, St Agnes. That's where it began.
Age three. An Iglu wetsuit. Knee-deep water.
Ben in his warm Iglu wetsuit
Ben was three years old when he first stood on a board. We used an Igloo wetsuit — the ones with the long back zip that are easy to wrestle a small child into and actually keep them warm — which sounds like a small detail but matters enormously when you're trying to get a toddler enthusiastic about cold Cornish water.
The setup couldn't have been simpler. Knee-deep water. White water waves rolling through. Me standing behind him, board under his feet, waiting for a wave, then pushing him in and watching him ride it all the way to the beach.
He fell off. A lot. Every single time he came up, I made sure the first thing he saw was my face — smiling, arms up, high five ready. He needed to know two things immediately: that he was safe, and that we were having fun. Both of those things had to be true before anything else.
That's not a coaching technique. That's the whole philosophy.
Having fun in the whitewater
The worst thing you can do
I've seen it happen on beaches all over the world — a parent who wants their child to love surfing so badly that they push too hard, go too deep, choose a wave that's slightly too big. The child goes under. Comes up scared. And something shifts. Fear gets in, and once fear is in, it's very hard to get it back out.
A bad experience with the sea at that age doesn't just ruin that session. It can ruin years of sessions. The ocean becomes something to be wary of rather than something to run towards.
Fun has to be at the absolute heart of everything you do in those early stages. Not progression. Not technique. Not catching the right wave. Fun. If they're coming up laughing, you're doing it right. If they're coming up crying, you've gone too far — go back to shallower water, smaller waves, more smiles.
Cruising in on his foamie!
The group that formed around us
Something interesting happened over those sessions at Trevaunance. Other parents were joining in too. Soon there was a little group of us — mums and dads all standing knee-deep in the Atlantic, pushing our kids into whitewash, high-fiving every wipeout.
We formalised it eventually into a board riders club with a few mates. Group sessions, always the same ethos: keep the vibes high, keep the waves small, keep it fun. What we noticed was that when the energy in the water was good — when the adults were laughing as much as the kids — the children naturally went deeper. Nobody told them to. They just wanted more.
That's the thing about fun. It's self-propelling.
Safe with Dad
The moment it changed
Learning to bottom turn at Trevaunance Cove
Gradually, without really planning it, the sessions evolved. The whitewash became green waves. Knee-deep became waist-deep. The pushes became longer, the rides further, the smiles bigger. Ben moved onto a soft-tech foamie and started riding along the face to the shore rather than just straight in.
He wasn't just standing up anymore. He was surfing.
And I hadn't taught him a single technique. I'd just kept pushing him into waves, making sure every wipeout ended in a high five, and let the ocean do the rest.
The Stage 1 lesson: Forget destinations. Forget boards. Forget technique. Your local beachbreak is the best place in the world to start — because it's close enough to go again next weekend, and going again next weekend is the entire point. The goal of Stage 1 isn't to create a surfer. It's to create a child who wants to come back.
Bali can wait. The Maldives can wait. Everything that comes later on this blog — every destination guide, every gear recommendation, every trip we've taken together — is built on what happened first in a cove in Cornwall.
Find your Trevaunance. Start there.
