Treading Light and Digging Deep
“It's a perfect place where life is perfect...” - Bella on Ireland.
After spending two months in Morocco, surfing, camping and feasting on tagine, photographer Bella Bunce and her partner Tom Baldwin swapped the Land of Rights for the Emerald Isle.
“We got back to England, packed up, changed our shorts for fleeces, and headed to Ireland for April. We drove to Wales to catch the ferry, then we drove straight across Ireland to Hometree. We stayed in a beautiful little wooden cabin. It was actually warmer than where we live in Cornwall because we live in a caravan and it's mouldy and cold. We spent a month there, mostly in the Clare area, planting trees three days a week, sometimes four. Then we travelled to Conormara to plant trees there, which was lovely, stunning. There’s no one around. My mind was blown. It felt like a dream state. Then we went to Bundoran area to surf, and then we travelled back to do some more volunteering, all while staying in our blue van or in a little wooden cabin.”
“I went with Tom, my partner, my partner in crime, my travel buddy. The aim of the journey was to just go and connect with nature and see what Hometree were doing, and plant as many trees as we could and do a little bit of good. We live on a plot of land in Cornwall where we're helping our landlord with regenerating the land, too. We wanted to go to Hometree to learn new skills and do some good things, but also be able to hopefully bring those skills back to Cornwall and incorporate them into our lives here.”
It wasn’t Bella’s first trip to Ireland, “I fell in love with all the greenery and the empty waves and the lovely people and the Guinness. It was the first time I had a Guinness, last year in Ireland. I had to get back there, mostly for the Guinness…” Although this time was slightly less fruitful on the wave front. When Bella first visited in October, they scored a perfect run of swell and conditions, making for easy filming and plenty of water time. However, their Spring trip started off slow: “The first two weeks after we got there, there was literally nothing. Not even longboard waves. We got a little bit frustrated. But after about five days we thought, let's just enjoy it. We just went on bike rides, cycled to the Cliffs of Moher, drank loads of Guinness, went to Trad Fest (traditional Irish music), just fully got into it with immersing ourselves in the area rather than solely hunting for waves.”
“And then the last two weeks were lush. It was mostly longboarding or mid-length and quiet. The people were nice. The waves are so nice. It was sunny! We had sun and we didn't even have gloves on. I was in 5.3 hooded NuWave suit, testing it for C-Skins, and some of their boots, too. Surfing for hours on end and I was so warm!”
The pair planned to make their Ireland trip as regenerative as possible. Bella had met Matt Smith, surfer and founder of planting project Hometree, a charity that is regenerating native woodland in Ireland, at a conference last year. “He held a kind of therapy space for people to deal with what's coming and with how the world is going. I broke down crying. It was really intense and really sad and really inspiring. And ever since I met him I had in my head that I wanted to go and volunteer at his place. I guess it was in my mind for a while.” Returning from their winter in Africa, Bella and Tom decided to head to Ireland to catch up with Matt, connect with nature, offset their travelling and do some good. To make their trip low impact the pair took everything they needed with them in their van. Upon arriving in County Clare, they would only drive when necessary, they opted for walking into town, cycling within the local area, buying locally grown veggies, using the wood burner in their cabin instead of heating and barely using wifi. “We were just reading books and cooking healthy food and surfing waves that were all within 20 minutes of where we were staying, unless we went on a big road trip up north, and then we'd spend a few days there. We really minimised our driving because we realised that when planting trees, it would take a shit ton of trees to offset those emissions, and those trees would then take years until they were actually doing any good of soaking up any of the carbon. At Hometree they don't really offer offsetting anymore. They only offer people to donate their time, or donate money so they can buy things to make the tree nursery better. We did tree planting some days, and then we were also learning how to grow baby trees from seeds or saplings. They taught us how to make the beds to grow them in.”
“I’m inspired. I might be going either back there or going to a friend's place up north to do some more this winter. It is a challenge. I'm going to set myself a little time once a year to just dedicate my body to the goals for a little while.”
With sustainable travel at the forefront of Bella’s mind, the couple also considered their kit. Riding hand-shaped surfboards crafted by local shapers they kept miles to a minimum, and they also worked alongside C-Skins to test and shoot the new NuWave collection. “We had 5.3 hooded NuWave suits, and C-Skins boots, which aren't NuWave yet. We didn't have gloves but we weren't cold. Me and my partner are both kind of hot blooded, so the 5.3 NuWave suits were perfect. There were a couple of weeks where we surfed almost every day in them, and they were flexible, warm and easy to get on and off. They kept me toasty! I imagine if it was the depths of winter you'd probably want to opt for the 6mm versions of the C-Skins NuWave suits.”
“I personally couldn't notice any difference in the feeling and flexibility to a non-eco suit. They've managed to achieve something different to other eco suits on the market, and they've made them a bit more flexible than ones I've tried in the past from other brands, which is nice because they were super simple to get on and off, comfortable and fitted well. I think it’s a no brainer really. They don’t seem too different to normal rubber. And they don't cost an arm and a leg like some of the other ones do.”
Bella is both a professional surf photographer and videographer, and a keen longboarder. Sharing these passions with her partner can be both a blessing and a curse: “Shooting in Ireland was interesting. I thought it was going to be smooth sailing because the first time I came here last October, it was a week of filming as much as possible because there were so many waves and so much good luck. But this time, because we only had two weeks, it was a little bit tricky trying to get the filming in with me and my partner, because we both just wanted to surf together. Thankfully we had a couple of lush long days which we used to nail down the filming at the local beach, taking it in turns. We had sun and everything, which I guess isn’t great for a winter campaign, but it was great for us. Surfing and filming that day was beautiful. We had one day in Bundoran where it was off shores and epic waves, and we just had to film there as well. That was a little bit trickier and a little bit rainier. It's always interesting doing those kind of things with a partner as well, rather than on a job. But we learnt how to do it together. But yeah, it was nice to come home with some clips because I've never actually had any of myself.”
Reminiscing on the trip, she said, “In the months that we were there we were planting trees, being in nature, reading books, surfing and cycling and just spending so much time together. It's such a relaxed place, and I remember thinking and feeling that it was the most relaxed I've been in my adult life. It's a perfect place where life is perfect. But also I think maybe I just didn't have any responsibility. We were just doing nice things and living freely. It was the most connected with myself I’ve been in a really long time.”
To view the NuWave range, click here.
If you’d like to learn more about Hometree, click here.
