going! Pack your shit up, I’ll meet you in Bridgend!" It was ironic that we were embarking on a marathon journey to the far north on the same weekend as the Great North Run up in Newcastle. Like any long distance challenge, if you want to go the distance you need to prepare with months of training, and have a race day plan. You need to pace yourself, not charge off too fast too early. And you need to keep some juice in the tank for the part of the race marathon runner’s call ‘hitting the wall’; the part where your body's telling you to quit but your mind’s refusing to give into the pain. Vaughanie picked me up at 8.30pm and we hit the road. From Wales, Thurso is a 10-hour drive if you go flat out all night. I had suggested that we fly up – it’s easier and you don’t miss a whole night of sleep. But Vaughanie being Vaughanie (an ever-ready driving machine), he insisted that we drive. He assured me I could get some sleep in the back, as long as Nate was awake and talking dirty to him. By about 11 I was dozing off, but I only managed about five minutes’ kip before Nate leaned back and shook me awake, saying, “Will, what the f--k’s wrong with you? Wake up! Where’s your stamina?” Naturally this went on for the next seven hours.
We freewheeled into Thurso at 6am and went straight to check the waves. We were all feeling the effects of spending 10 hours in the warp zone. Nate looked redder than normal, and Vaughanie resembled the walking dead with pinholes for eyes. It was at this point that things started to go weird. Maybe it was the fatigue or maybe it was the sight of measly three-foot waves that started it, I don't know. But all of a sudden there was a funny atmosphere in the car.
dom “gooshlager” duquimin tucks in.
the sleep deprivation didn’t affect vaughanies’s sense of balance, Just his sense of humour.
“Having just spent ten hours in the car, amping for a wave, patience was short and tempers were frayed. So in hindsight it probably wasn’t such a good idea to spend the next four hours driving down countless farm tracks searching for new spots.”