Monday 18th January

We woke up a bit tired and dehydrated from the night before, I made my usual phone call home and then we were rushing to be ready for our 8.45am pickup. Crazy Terry was phoning me to hurry to the van as I was still waiting on Lisa, and when we got there he was in a frenzy over getting to the beach before this other surf club did in order to get the 'good' spot. We hopped on the bus and joined a crowd of others from all over Europe, I purposely sat in the one person seat with my sunglasses on in a tired, non-sociable mood and left Lisa to sit next to a chatty younger and enthused, 'Karl from Denmark' while I had head space. Our bus also consisted of two French girls, a crowd of four from I don't know where and two guys from Switzerland with the same name, 'Syril' which everyone was laughing at the coincidence of them finding one another as new friends on travels. After a few stop off's for other pickups; including two late Irish guys who Terry was slagging off before they showed up (he'd had many recurring bad incidences of having to go and wake Irish guys up to come on the trip due to them having got drunk the night before and so was telling us of their bad reputation - something we need'nt be informed about in being practically neighbours to the Irish) we 20 minutes later arrived at Ballina beach.

We got our wet suits on (this was a sight of struggle in itself which left me exhausted...) and after Terry had slightly lost it as we had arrived at the beach first and then the other club had snook on after and tried to take the spot....the two buses of us were partnered up to carry down boards and Philippe from Italy taught us all the basics before we followed him into the water. Terry later joined and there was also another older fella who I never caught the name of. They held the boards still for us and then when a wave came told us 'up', front foot, back foot, and basically you are supposed to glide gracefully with the wave. In my first few attempts I don't think i was getting 'up' fast enough and then Phillipe told me to keep going to him and helped grasp what I was doing wrong. I was then taking my hands off too soon before having my footing right and then after all that being got right, I had my head looking down at my feet after I'd stood up. Once I grasped all this I did manage to actually stand up and glide gracefully along a wave. It felt great and I was enthusiastic to keep going at it. Phillipe was very helpful and I managed to stand up a few more times again, surfed two more properly but then the luck of the type of wave and timing up is also the other reason why I would jump off/come off once stood up for a short amount of time. Either way after so long we were exhausted from paddling back against the waves out to the point you are to surf from and my session was ended with serious cramp in one calf.

We all got out the water and showered and then the older teacher came and offered me and Lisa his home made cinnamon cake and gave Phillipe some other cakes. We sat and ate it as he told us about his home town, Noosa, and showed us many surfing pics from there and successful surfers he's trained. We thanked him for the cake, said goodbye and got back on our bus where Karl was in confusion over his lost tshirt. Lisa and I joked about a pelican or koala nabbing it while he ran to check the shower area and it wasn't until 10 minutes into the bus journey back, one of the Syril's had picked it up at the back.

When we got back, we went to the beach to chill, and then did a long walk along the left hand side which was the doggy-zone. It was like something out of the film, 'Marley and me' as these happy souls bounded around the beach and into the waves, all different shapes and sizes and personality types (I also had flashbacks to watching 101 Dalmatians as a kid and how some of them look like their owners...) and we even saw one dog get wrestles after his owner had gone into surf, ran in the waves to join him at which point the owner let him surf his board. The brown Labrador-type looked delighted as he soared on the board in the waves, Byron bay felt a wonderful place to be.

Later that night I was missing home, I just wanted a nice hot bath and a cuddle from the other half. Instead, I settled for a nice hot shower, did a meditation (something I've promised myself to now get back into daily) and we chilled in the communal kitchen area and looked at booking the next place up before going to bed early.

xxx