I say relaxation but we sent him to the Manly Surf School which runs four days a week, for an hour and a half each day. Does anyone know how physically hard and tiring surfing is? Apparently it's hard, harder than Mr T without his milk. I haven't had the chance to have a go myself because work gets in the way (yeah, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it).
So Dylan had completed four lessons in his first week of half term, and he was telling me how many waves he caught at each lesson and about getting into the barrel of the wave etc. I have been told by some of my Aussie friends that surfing is extremely hard and just standing up can take weeks of practise. So each evening when Dylan told me how many waves he was catching, I took it with a pinch of salt.
Monday 6th Oct was a bank holiday here NSW, so I took the opportunity to get down to the beach with Sandra and Dylan and see how the surfing lessons were coming along. Unfortunately the weather at 8:15am wasn't great, very grey and overcast but at least it was warm, at around 25C.
I was expecting Dylan to struggle getting up on the board, let alone riding the thing into the beach. It wasn't that I didn't think he could do it, it was just that he hadn't been doing it long enough and I expected he would get in time. I thought that maybe an instructor would be holding the board for Dylan, as he tried to balance on a wave, but no, he was able to do it all by himself!
He did it again and again, he was able ride the waves all the way in to the shore, even though the surf school didn't take the children out too far, they were still able to ride for a good 10 to 15 seconds. I have to admit that I was very impressed with Dylan and his surfing skills, and his overall enthusiasm for surfing, altough he did find it hard paddling back out beond the breakers, but he kept trying until he managed it.
So now we have a future Irish/English World Champion Surfer on our hands, he has told me that now he needs a surfboard, so he can practise as much as he can, I think it could be a wise investment :)
Much Love
S, I & D xxx
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