A bit of history

Our Director Tim Jones first began surfing on wooden “belly boards” in the early 1960´s. His parents in fact had begun surfing during the 1940´s and their honeymoon in 1951 was actually a surfing holiday to Newquay in South West England.

Tim grew up in South Wales and saw the arrival of the first “stand-up surfers” in the mid 60´s. By age 10 in 1967 he first experienced riding a “Malibu” surf board.  This experience made such a lasting impression that he knew from that early age that he wanted to base his future life around surfing.

By the 1970´s the “short board revolution” had arrived and Tim was surfing the breaks of South Wales, Cornwall and Devon. Always interested in surf board design he rode many of the futurist designs that that era produced. By 1980 he began a career in surf board building in north Devon working for such leading UK companies as Chapter, Tiki Surf, and Wave Graffiti. He was very lucky  to work under the tutorage of some of the best visiting Australian and American shapers to come to Europe, notably Bob Liddell, Bruce Heggie, Steve Kroll and Randy Sleigh.

In 1982 in Woolacombe he founded Woolacombe Board Riders surf club, coaching local children and their parents. It was suggested to him by his board making friends that he could try to teach surfing commercially, and in 1983 he began his first surf school, T. J. Surfing. He was greatly helped in this by Woolacombe Surf Life Saving Club and Tiki Surf. This was the first commercial school in Devon and at the time only one other commercial school existed in the UK, based in Newquay and run by Roger Mansfield.

Tim kept up his coaching of surfing on a commercial and club level throughout the 80´s and coached from absolute beginner level a number of notable surfers including Neil Clifton, Wayne “Waxer” Cowie, Davie Allen, Mark Saunders and many others.

Tim competed as well throughout this period and divided his work time between surf school and board making.

During this period Tim developed a strong working relationship with Semente Surf Boards in Portugal and its owners, particularly the shaper Nick Urrichio. Winters were spent working at their factory in Portugal and surfing the stunning waves of the Ericeria area and the summers coaching in the UK.

In 1990 Tim moved back to Wales and as he had always been an active member of the British Surfing Association (BSA) and had so much coaching experience he was approached by the BSA to assist their then National Coach, Ian Simpson, in devising a National Coaching System. As senior coach for the Welsh Surfing Federation he began schools in Porthcawl and Llangennith and these highly successful schools became the benchmark for standards the BSA wished to set on a national scale. He began the first special needs initiative for surfing in the UK and carried on his coaching of competitive surfers, particularly, in the field of physical training and competing himself.

During this period he championed the use of softboards in all beginner surf lessons, the idea of an accredited school system, and the minimum requirement of a Beach Life Guard award to be held by all BSA surfing instructors. Tim is still very actively involved in the BSA and the refinement of its coaching system. He is also an accredited instructor course provider for the International Surfing Association.

The system we use at this school has 28 years of development, Tim has focused on the core skills needed throughout all levels of surfing and the constant development of this system is one of the reasons for our success.

Tim came to Lanzarote in 1996 knowing that with warm water and consistent surfing conditions this system could really expand into what we now use at Surf School Lanzarote. Tim constantly trains his coaches in this system and the development of their coaching, and of course, still is actively coaching. He runs coaching courses for the BSA and ISA, organises Life Guard courses and is still very involved with surf board design. Two of his sons, Jamie and Daniel and partner Gillian, all skilled surfers, have also begun coaching careers.