A History of Surfing in West Clare - Part I

In an attempt to write a brief history of surfing in West Clare I am very conscious of the fact that memory can be unreliable, and so I apologise in advance to anyone that’s been forgotten or misrepresented. I am doing this now to get what I can still remember down while I can still recall it. I hope to use music as a kind of prompt to memory, and I hope to frame the tale with a bit of a musical soundtrack. In the same way as smells can be a strong trigger of memory, I hope to use some of the music of the time to prompt some fading memories of those early days.

What I hope to do is to redress the situation, whereby all of the original surfers from each of the surfing counties are documented, but weirdly the first guys who surfed through the winter in Clare, going on to pioneer most of the waves in Clare, are forgotten. Some of the lads involved have offered an explanation, and to best categorise their general view, I would best describe the surf scene in Clare as more underground or counterculture than it was in the other counties. These boys all started surfing in the mid 70’s, which was basically the 1960’s in Ireland and the counter cultural movement here seemed to crystallise around traditional Irish music, which was fertile ground in the Banner.