Water Sports and Climbing
Due to its long coastline, various maritime sports are popular in Cornwall, notably sailing, surfing and gig rowing. International events are frequently held in Cornwall. International events in both are held in Cornwall. Cornwall hosted the Inter-Celtic Watersports Festival in 2006.
Surfing was popularised in Cornwall during the late 20th century, and has since become readily associated with Cornishness. The waves around the Cornish coastline are created by low pressure systems from the Atlantic Ocean which unleash powerful swells eastwards creating multiple, excellent surfing conditions around Cornwall. Newquay, one of Britain's "premier surfing towns", regularly hosts world championship surfing events. Surfing in particular is very popular, as locations such as Bude and Newquay offer some of the best surf in the UK. On September 2, 2007, 300 surfers arrived at Polzeath beach, Cornwall to set a new world record for the highest number of surfers riding the same wave (as part of the Global Surf Challenge and part of a project called Earthwave to raise awareness about global warming).
Pilot gig rowing has been popular for many years. The Isles of Scilly hosts the World Pilot Gig Championships every year. There are sailing clubs at some of the ports, e.g. Fowey. The Royal Fowey Yacht Club is located in a waterfront setting at Fowey: was founded in 1880. Its third Honorary Secretary, from 1893, was Arthur Quiller-Couch, who became Sir Arthur. The Lerryn Regatta was a popular annual event and at one time it was called The Henley of the West. It was mentioned in the Royal Cornwall Gazette of 1870. There was a break for the first World War and the regatta restarted with a Peace Regatta in 1919. There was a second break for the second World War and the regatta restarted in 1953 and ran until 1968 when four thousand people attended.
- Rock climbing
Rock climbing on the sea cliffs and inland cliffs has been popular since the pioneering work of A. W. Andrews and others in the early 1900s, and is now highly developed.
Read more about this topic: Sport In Cornwall
Famous quotes containing the words water, sports and/or climbing:
“I respect the ways of old folks, but the blood of a rooster or a goat cannot turn the seasons, change the course of the clouds and fill them up with water like bladders. The other night, at the ceremony for Legba, I danced and sang my fill: I am a black man, no? and I enjoyed it like a true Negro should. When the drums beat, I feel it in the pit of my stomach, I feel the itch in my hips and up and down my legs, I have got to join the party. But that is all.”
—Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)
“There be some sports are painful, and their labor
Delight in them sets off. Some kinds of baseness
Are nobly undergone, and most poor matters
Point to rich ends.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“To be seventy years old is like climbing the Alps. You reach a snow-crowned summit, and see behind you the deep valley stretching miles and miles away, and before you other summits higher and whiter, which you may have strength to climb, or may not. Then you sit down and meditate and wonder which it will be.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)