While the weather in Britain right now is more like the Mentawais than the North Pole, the same cannot be said for the surf. Thankfully, British beer has been saving surfers for centuries.

Check out the latest from the Reef Free Tour crew…

Regrettably the Atlantic Ocean failed to co-operate, but that did not stop the fun nor the enthusiasm generated when the Reef FREE Tour hit the UK last week. With no waves on offer, the Reef team and local agent Adam Zervas hit the road to check out all the action in the S.W of England. In four days, they managed to visit over twenty five surf shops including Down The Line (Hayle), Natural Balance (St Ives), Stones Reef (Praa Sands), Chapeldine (Sennen), Ann’s Cottage, Overhead, North Shore, Ocean Magic, Boardwalk, Extreme Sports Watergate Bay (Newquay), Surfers (Porth), Bettie Stores (Mawgan Porth), Trevone Store (Trevone Bay), Ann’s Cottage (Wadebridge), Ann’s Cottage (Polzeath), Zuma Jay, In Deep (Bude), Le Sport, Waikuku (Barnstaple), Tiki (Braunton), Redwood (Croyde), Bay Surf, Shore 2 Surf (Woolacombe) and finally Genesis (Ilfracoombes). They racked up over 500km, ate 27 Cornish pasties, quaffed over 50 pints of Englands finest and spread plenty of love – distributing 200 T-shirts, 50 pairs of sandals, 30 pairs of boardshorts, 1500 flyers and 450 posters to those lucky enough to cross their paths along the way.

Despite the fact that there was no swell, being “FREE to do what we want when we want”, the crew still managed to get wet on several occasions. Taking advantage of the extremely high tides, one afternoon Adam Zervas took Manu Portet and Reef grom Mat Rodwell on a two hour S.U.P (stand up paddle) expedition. The boys went from Porth, out to Porth Island and on to Whipsiderry exploring caves only accessible from the ocean and enjoyed the perfect water visibility created by the lack of swell. On another occasion, to beat the boredom of the flatspell, local Reef rider Harry Timpson took the Reef FREE Tour crew down to Newquay Harbour to jump off the harbour wall along with the rest of the ratpack of Newquay groms. We’re happy to report that despite some big moves being thrown down, nobody was hurt!

In case you were unable to make it to one of the Reef FREE Tour stops in the S.W of England last week, don’t sweat it ! The Reef FREE Tour shall return to Fistral Beach in Newquay the first week of August during the Relentless Boardmasters in association with VANS. There will be beach clean ups, loads of prizes to be won including t-shirts, sandals, stickers and lots lots more. See you there…

For those of you who have not yet done so, be sure to check http://freetour.europe.reef.com. Register your personal information, then log into the event site. You could win the Reef FREE Tour van (Volkswagen California Beach) at the end of this summer – simply upload a video showing what being free means to you and you’ll be in the running to let Reef offer you the chance to be FREE. Check out “about” and “how to play” for more details. Good luck.