I’d been to the very top of Portugal various times as I took my van from Scotland, through England and France, and eventually Spain – but had never ventured deep into Portugal.

So I lept at the chance of the Algarve. Warm water, warm people, warm sand! Stayed at a pretty cool surf hostel called the Good Feeling.

Full photos and report to follow.

And so it is a pleasure to come across short films that you haven’t seen or somehow you’ve missed. And so I’d like to share the ‘She Was a Girl’ short video, which features music by The Windy Hills, artwork by Jim Denevan, and video by Andrew Kidman.

If you like your beach culture a little bit arty, then watch the short video below and enjoy:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

But more than that, they are aiming for a whopping 100,000 signatures.

It is a very worthwhile campaign that goes to the heart of what we do. To put it simply, no waves = no surf.

So please support it as much as you can, sign up here or sign up to Surfers Against Sewage. Even if you aren’t a surfer, if you love the ocean, then this is for you too.

What if the next wave never comes?

Please sign at Protect Our Waves

Coffee doesn’t necessarily help you to surf better, but coffee is a crucial part of any surf trip.

As a UK based surfer, I often find myself in some of the more extreme places on the UK mainland. Places where Starbuck is nothing more than a character in Moby Dick. I love these places – not just for their potential for surf – but also for the fact that you can take your salty beard and beaten-up van and cruise effortlessly far from iPhones, Instagram and large coffee chains.

Pleasures are simple and usually revolve around nature, the odd bizarre encounter with a farmer, and coffee. And so being far from electricity and civilization, I have found that my best companion on a surf trip has become my trusty moka pot. Yep, the elegant-looking aluminium pot of Italian origins which when heated builds up steam pressure to force hot water through coffee, has itself become a veteran of many van-based surf trips.

For the rest of the article please visit the Bean and Ground Blog!

• Overfishing: The last 120 years has seen a 95% reduction in populations of big European fish such as halibut, ling and bluefin tuna.
• Oceans have absorbed 30% of carbon dioxide emissions since the beginning of the industrial revolution (1750).
• The amount of plastic washed up onto beaches has increased 77% in the last 15 years. Just one supermarket carrier is enough to kill a whale.
• Since 1950 there’s been a rise by 800% in background noise from shipping etc, making it harder for whales and dolphins to communicate.

What can you do about it? Well you can read Surfers Against Sewage’s ‘Break the Bag Habit’ campaign now.

It was January 2011 that I posted an article about artist and surfer Jessica Cooper’s artwork. Inspired by a really beautiful article in the Surfer’s Path, I loved the way that her simple visual depictions of surfers were reminiscent of short poems and how their pared down beauty managed to resonate on a deeper level. Somehow her artwork made me think of that great line about not seeking a daily increase in life, but a daily decrease (“Hack away at the inessentials“).

Anyway, it has come to my attention that one of the images that I most liked is now for sale from the folks here at Arbor Collective on the front of a bamboo/organic cotton T-shirt. I’d say it is definitely worth checking out – worth supporting by the artist and the company from the looks of it.

In the meantime, here is more of her artwork for you to get your daily visual vitamins. I hope you enjoy it.

For more on Jessica please visit her excellent website or grab a T whilst you can!

Well, a rapid flick through the pages of the newly launched Wax Magazine may make you change your mind. The magazine, which according to the guys who put it together, aims to “start a conversation about (and between) artists that surf and surfers who make art – a conversation that ultimately engages the city at large”. And it is definitely an intriguing start, making it worth the 20 dollars it cost to ship the magazine over to the UK…

If you are interested in the role between surf and art, then there probably aren’t too many magazines out there which will float your boat like this one. And while it is understandably very NY-centric, references to mythical figures of surfing like Bob Simmons, Steve Lis and Miki Dora help to elevate the magazine to a magazine which is relevant to everyone.

There are lots of highlights, including an epic article about a surf charity in Gaza, a rad article with surf auteur Mikey DeTemple, but my personal favourite section – which makes it worth the 20 dollars alone – is a section which features the photography by John Luke which reads:

“I once heard surfing described as riding the horizon and, as platitudinous as that sounds, I believe that it’s true; surfers occupy an unfamiliar threshold between body and nature – above and beneath. Allow me to offer this example from my own life to clarify the nature of those distinctions and their overlap: when I was ten years old, on a road trip through Northern California with my family, I looked over a cliff on a grey morning and saw tens of upright bodies floating motionless in the far, horizon-less distance. For a long, quiet moment, it seemed to me that they were walking on water.”

Go on – support a new and alternative surf and art magazine – Wax up now!

[note: video coming shortly - I'm having issues with it now!]

My favourite piece of work was a poem called “The Room of Your Own Making IX”. Although you can’t take photos of the actual work, I scribbled it down and it reads as follows:

The Room of Your Own Making IX

Take all the anger out of the room

Take all the sorrow out of the room

Take all the shadows out of the room

Open the window

Let everything in the room breathe the ocean wind

Hope you enjoy!

Whether or not you’re convinced, I was recently lured into reading David Kaiser’s How the Hippies Saved Physics, an account of a radical group of hippie physicists who rescued Bell’s theorem from relative obscurity. In doing so, this group of hippie physicists challenged the field of physics which was becoming increasingly centred around calculator-bashing narrow-minded physicists gearing up for war.

I know what you’re thinking: that your quantum physics is a bit rusty.

Well, don’t worry, as here is a crib sheet: in brief, Bell’s theorem gives precise physical content to the mystic motto “we are all one” by claiming that quantum objects that had once interacted would retain some strange link or connection, even after they had moved arbitrarily apart from each other. Although having said that, the Fundamental Fysiks Group didn’t actually set out to explore Bell’s theorem so much as explore the parapsychological – it is just that the Irish physicist’s theorem seemed like a good way to explain weird occult like actions at a distance. What?!

As a taster, here are some lines from Elizabeth Rauscher:

I believe in nonlocality: I believe nonlocality is real. Reality is better described by more than four dimensions. Most of everything, I think, is spirit, and a little is condensed out as matter. I believe in remote viewing, precognition, psychokineses – because I did it – remote healing effects on at least bacteria systems, electromagnetic effects on biological systems. UFOs are a question mark. Life and death exist. And interestingly enough, it only takes one experiment to find out that you believe in life, because it only takes the birth of one child… We can have peace, love, and joy on this planet, instead of war, crime and violence. Instead of warships, we need peaceship.

That is pretty profound stuff if you care to read it!

The sort of view Northern Californian view they’d have been familiar of (Big Sur)

I have to say that some of David Kaiser’s expertly explained physics went a bit beyond my salt-corroded brain, but I did enjoy my foray into physics. If you are curious about delving further into links between consciousness and physical matter, the parapsychological or quantum physics in general, I’d say you’re on to a winner. Although if you just like the cover of the book, then I might give it a miss if I were you.

Next stop for me will be Franz Capra’s The Tao of Physics…