Snowdonia Wavegarden

[Drailed]

Can you imagine what a shit day out that would be, sat in some shitty arena around a snow plough going back and fourth through poo brown water watching some bloke try to nurse repetitive top turns all the while, the hoards of mongs you are surrounded by are getting twitchy and weird on all the free red bull they have been chugging down.

[crabmeat thompson]

in about 35 years, we'll look at red bull and its negative health effects the same way we look at cigarettes now.

[foamy]

is it just that they have now funded so much crazy human behaviour that everyone just steps aside and goes, "OK, Red Bull! Do your thing!" regardless of how fcuken stupid it is?

I reckon it's that,
(1) They are probably the only consistent non-endemic sponsor for the sports they focus on. You don't bite the hand that feeds.
(2) As far as the crazy shit. It's the new media landscape where people don't watch much TV any more, but everyone will watch a short wacky internet clip that's gone viral. That's what has the reach. Like those talk shows now, Jimmy Fallon or James Corden, where the show seems more about creating webclips of short wacky celebrity moments rather than actually creating a coherent TV show.

[Beerfan]

in about 35 years, we'll look at red bull and its negative health effects the same way we look at cigarettes now.

The kind of people who drink these kind of drinks daily are the kind of people we could do without I reckon. Might be a good thing if it wipes out regular drinkers of the stuff

[crabmeat thompson]

in about 35 years, we'll look at red bull and its negative health effects the same way we look at cigarettes now.

The kind of people who drink these kind of drinks daily are the kind of people we could do without I reckon. Might be a good thing if it wipes out regular drinkers of the stuff

Well in that case, I applaud red bull for partaking in this new age natural selection.

[The Mighty Sunbird]

unless you're an 18 year old skater

white bread and red bull ftw

with an occasional 2 minute noodles for extra nutrients...

[chrisb]

Oh dear, the Wave Garden has been closed due to an undisclosed technical issue that will require the pool to be drained.
.

OK, who dropped the chokito bar in the pool?

If I remember correctly, years ago they had a world championship surf event at the Allentown, Pennsylvania wave pool. Just the once.

[Nick Carroll]

Yes they did, in 1984. It was the first event of the '84/'85 world tour and was won by my little brother. Some funny shit happened in Allentown that week I can tell ya.

/Users/nickcarroll/Nick/Tom bio/TC photos/Allen Town what!?.jpg

Oh I forgot, this is Realsurf where photos can't be posted unless you remember the 1990s Content Management System.

[petulance]

Redbull comp at Snowdonia ... what's with the brown water?

https://vimeo.com/139829911

[foamy]

I believe the brown colour is mainly from peat which is a local feature.

As I understand it, the Wave Garden has a key engineering failure. One of the main things promised was a quality wave every minute. There was some scepticism about the 'every minute' because turbulence is a big problem affecting wave quality in wave pools. The rapid dissipation of turbulence was one of the main engineering focuses in the overall design, which they were confident they had achieved in the prototype in Spain.
In Wales, apparently it didn't quite work. The one minute turnaround meant there was often significant backwash from previous waves. They have been running waves every 2 minutes, which is essentially a halving of the original customer offer.

[chrisb]

As I understand it, the Wave Garden has a key engineering failure. One of the main things promised was a quality wave every minute. There was some scepticism about the 'every minute' because turbulence is a big problem affecting wave quality in wave pools. The rapid dissipation of turbulence was one of the main engineering focuses in the overall design, which they were confident they had achieved in the prototype in Spain.
In Wales, apparently it didn't quite work. The one minute turnaround meant there was often significant backwash from previous waves. They have been running waves every 2 minutes, which is essentially a halving of the original customer offer.

After halving the offer they will probably have to double the price to make themselves economically viable....... could be the beginning of the end.

[godsavetheking]

The interview with Mitch Crews on the Surfing Life website is quite amusing. To paraphrase, he basically says that the wave is piss weak and temporarily wrecks your surfing but the contest was fun and that north Wales is beautiful but a large proportion of the population are mongs. No great surprises

Commercially, I believe the big problem in the long term will be the lack of a significant indigenous population of surfers up there. So if they built it where I live (where there's allegedly 13,000 or so surfers plus a further 40,000 an hour up the motorway*) and floodlit it during the winter they'd get a decent amount of people surfing after work plus all the tourists during the summer. Up there (where there are apparently under 5,000 surfers), they're depending on inland surfers going there instead of to one of the coasts (can't really see that happening on a regular basis), tourists going there on a pretty much one-off basis and any school/youth groups they can persuade to come for their outward bound activities.

* figures based on bullshit surveys of how many people have surfed once in the previous 12 months and some questionable regional extrapolation. You probably need to divide by four, possibly more, to get the true figure of actual regular surfers

[2nd Reef]

Yesterday I spoke about Wave Garden to a Welsh who travelled home recently, said the day he visited there were SUP's, skis, whitewater kayaks, and random flotsam dotted around the pool. Didn't seem to be much order to it. Also, the wind was blowing dogs off chains so the surface was far from what was presented in the RB comp. It's like that quite a bit he says?

Though he lives in Australia he maintains a streak of Welsh pride and was chuffed the surfing world was focussing on his wee country. After being confronted with the reality of Wave Garden he's gone back to bragging about Tom Jones and Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyll-llantysiliogogogoch.

[godsavetheking]

Yeah, wind wise they absolutely lucked it for the comp. I've never been there but I'm guessing it's pretty exposed and we do get a lot of wind. If you're feeling masochistic, there's a webcam of Surf Snowdonia on the magicseaweed website (yes, really) so you can see what it's like when the red bull circus has left town

[el rancho]

Surfing has reached peak tard in 2015.

[Beerfan]

Surfing has reached peak tard in 2015.

No er, when they put one in Dubbo, or Ipswich, then the surfing tard peak will be reached.

[alakaboo]

Ipswich would be a far more logical place to put one.

[crabmeat thompson]

goodna would be perfect, imho.

good times in goodna.