Like anything organic, there is the chance that Tubestation will grow until it finds a natural balance point within its environment. The environment of coastal Cornwall offers us some amazing opportunities as community-minded surfers.

St Merryn, for example, a large village near Padstow and a hub for all the nearby surf spots – Harlyn, Constantine, Booby’s Bay, as well as Trevone, Treyarnon, Mother Ivey’s and Porthcothan. Seven bays for seven days. An old chapel built by the community in 1905, now derelict, sitting in a community which both the residents and the statistics agree is… in need.

Tubestation’s pioneers are currently looking at the potential for creating a Tubestation St Merryn to rescue this old community hub and give it back to the people of St Merryn as a gift, to serve their needs and bring people together. The strategy is to phase each project, with community consultation or “listening” being the key to phase one, so that whatever is formed will have the ownership and involvement of the people themselves. From this a project plan is drawn up and funds are raised, the work is done and the place is run, and the fruit can begin to grow.

Cornwall has this rich heritage, dating back to the 1800’s, of the Methodist movement galvanizing rural and coastal communities to come together and build together. Part of the legacy of this radical grass roots movement is the hundreds of little chapels that are now so commonplace in the towns and villages. Public buildings designed for community, but increasingly difficult to maintain, and increasingly sold off to become yet more second homes for wealthy developers, lost to the people forever. And worse still, where there is no vision on a local level the money from sales is returned into a central pot and used to prop up the larger town and city churches. So rural and coastal communities lose out in every way.

We have seen with the example of Polzeath and the possibilities in St Merryn, and approaches we have had from two other coastal and surfing communities in key locations, that there may be another way, a brighter future where nobody loses and everybody wins. Where we honour the radical roots of these places by rescuing them and giving them back to serve their intended purpose for this generation and this culture. And in doing so, that whole communities might be transformed from the inside. To feel we could be taking part in a grass roots movement of surfers around the coast of Cornwall to put the unity back in community, we would be stoked beyond belief.

That’s the dream, anyway.