Using this biomimicry, the Cove could
produce up to 1,000 waves an hour in
the pool, but more importantly, it could
change the shape of a wave: beginning
at, say, a pro-level two metres, mutating
into an intermediary size, and then
ending as a beginner-friendly 50cm.
More than that, as each shape cedes to
the next, a current tugs the surfer back- meaning pros can’t surf right into the
beginners. The technology allowed all
three ability ranges to surf in a lake
together, the equivalent of a football
novice training on a pitch with Premier
League professionals.
This system, surrounded by native
grass and woodland, and powered
by renewable energy, would provide
what Hounsfield needed. He felt the
universe had begun answering his
prayers – and then got out his surfboard.
on former farmland in Easter Compton,
a village 20 minutes’ drive from Bristol.
Costing £25m to build, it will include a
200 metre by 200 metre artificial lake
surrounded by natural meadow and
woodland, where some of the projected
150,000 annual visitors can camp or
stay in huts. It will be Europe’s first
artificial wave pool for a “mass surfing
audience” and, although others are
under construction, only the second
in the world, after the BSR Surf Resort
that opened in Waco, Texas, last year.
Walking across the site in rubber
safety boots and hard hat on a sunny
day in early summer, Hounsfield
comes to a stop at the edge of the vast,
excavated hole that will soon be the
lake. Work on shaping the crucial lake
bottom will be delicate, painstaking
and time-consuming, he explains. “It’s
by far the most difficult part to build.
Wavegarden supplies the measure-
ments and angles, which it calculates
with formulae that it guards very
closely. The surface has to be formed
by laying a series of concrete facets a
few centimetres wide. It’s measured
right down to molecular level, and the
tolerance when we’re building is one
millimetre in a 200-metre wide pool.
And for all the technology, it comes
down to a bloke pouring concrete.
If it isn’t perfect, it has to be redone.
We’ll be doing a lot of checks.”
Hounsfield freely admits that the
objections he anticipated have materi-
alised. His mission may be based in a
soulful, ecological surfing ethos, and
the lake an approximation of the open,
democratic nature of a real beach, but to
some surfers with a “local” mentality,
the mixed-ability pool puts him firmly
in the commercialising camp. “I knew some surfers wouldn’t like
us using beginner-level waves,” he
says. “You might be surprised at the
degree of complaints and anger I get
sometimes. Someone a few days ago
saw on our Facebook page an image of
a young woman paddling out [lying on
a board and stroking with the arms to
reach the waves], and commented that
she was positioned wrongly, and if we
used pictures like that, all we were going
to do was clog up the sea with people
who didn’t know what they were doing.”
He makes a point of personally debating
with objectors, and in that instance
explained he wanted to use images of
people of all abilities to make it clear
that beginners were as welcome as pros.
“The only thing to do is to explain
what we believe in,” he says. “We’re
trying to do something to help the
community and the planet, and not be
a place solely for champion surfers. I also
like to point out to people that they were
beginners themselves, once.”
For now, he is winning the argument.
Thinking among the medical community
has in some ways caught up with
Hounsfield’s ideas. Across the world,
government organisations recognise
the burgeoning “blue health” movement,
which acknowledges the benefits that
spending time near water has in terms of
health, stress and relationship building.
That recognition has already helped
him agree a deal for the next Wave –
a £40m, 100-acre centre in London’s
Lea Valley (home to 117,000 of the UK’s
650,000 surfers), for which plans have
been submitted and seem likely to be
approved. He says he has backing to
build five more in the UK and abroad.
There is some debate in his team,
he says, about who should ride the
first wave at the opening. He’s not
going near it himself (“I don’t want the
attention! And what if I cocked it up?”)
and wonders if it should be about any
one person at all. “I mean, it’s not even
just about surfing. The Wave is about
all the things we need to be addressing,
you know? About a more holistic vision
of life. It’s about everything.” �Richard Benson wrote about the fitness
lab at the top of Everest in 03.18DUE TO OPENIN OCTOBER2019, THEWAVE ISCURRENTLYA 70-ACREBUILDING SITEFOURThe technology behindWavegarden allowssurfers of all abilityranges to surf in alake together – theequivalent of a footballnovice training on apitch with PremierLeague professionals09-19-FTwave.indd 135 19/07/2019 19:13