Swell conditions in the Westcountry means great week for surfers is bad news for business

Although this is not official, I get the feeling the economy in the Westcountry may have suffered slightly this week.

For more than ten days, the surf has barely dipped below "quite good" and has frequently been in the "very epic" region, meaning that bosses up and down the coast have had every excuse under the sun thrown at them for not being able to make it in for work.

It has been a bad week for business in the South West, but it has been a great week for surfers.

Last Saturday, the British Surf Championships was held in classic and building surf. The open, masters, women's and junior titles were decided in pumping conditions at Fistral Beach.

Massive swells forecast for Sunday drove contest director Dave Reed to call for two peaks to be run all day on Saturday for the maximum number of heats to be surfed in good waves.

"This is the British titles," said Reed. "It's an important competition.

"We needed to give the best surfers an opportunity to show what they could do in the best conditions we could find."

Bringing all their organisational skill and a crack team of Judges, Tabulators and Beach Marshalls together, Reed and head Judge Ester Spears put 50 heats through between Dawn and Dusk, quite a feat given the short daylight hours.

Stu Campbell, from Woolacombe, took the open title ahead of in-form Jayce Robinson. Gordon Fontaine took third and Oli Adams smashed his way to fourth, picking up the highest wave score award from O'Neill along the way.

In the women's, it was Sarah Beardmore who remained focused in the chunky conditions, dropping into a couple of bombs in the final and taking the victory.

Coming on the back of her European triumph at Bundoran last month, Beardmore has cemented her place at the top of women's surfing in the UK.

I managed to catch up with her for an exclusive interview which will be out in the next issue of Wavelength.

The younger divisions ran over to Sunday and, with an epic tow session under way at the Cribbar, the groms were relocated to Towan, where Harry DeRoth and Flora Lawton were joined by Liam Murray Strout on the winner's roster.

Meanwhile, out at the Cribbar, Ben Skinner and Richie Sills pulled into some huge waves, which led to national newspapers making calls of "50-foot waves" and an "18-month phenomenon". Of course, they were wrong, it would be a lot less than 18 months before the Cribbar broke again.

On Tuesday, Bude's Reubyn Ash powered his way to victory in the inaugural Relentless Lynmouth Super Series with the progressive surfing that he is known for.

The event was held at Devon's notoriously long left-hander, which up until a few years ago was still considered a bit of a secret spot.

Reubyn managed to combo Russ Winter in the finals with an amazing 9.77 and perfect 10.

Anyone who has surfed Lynmouth will know it takes a proper size swell to get it going, and, sure enough, back in Newquay the swell was hitting and the Cribbar was showing its ugly face once again.

One guy paddled out to give it a go, but it wasn't until an even bigger swell kicked in on Thursday, that the tow teams got stuck in.

As we head into the weekend, the swell is not going anywhere, but the wind is due to switch around to the north, meaning that the south coast might be the place to head.

So make sure you get in, have a good surf and get it out of your systems, because next week we have to go back to work and sort out this economy!