Constantine Bay Skim Session – Golden Hour Perfection

When people talk about the best skimboarding beaches in the UK, Mother Ivey’s Bay is always near the top of the list. Its steep beach, powerful shore dump and fast-breaking waves make it one of the country’s most iconic skim spots.

But just a 20-minute walk around the headland lies a very different beach that often flies under the radar; Constantine Bay.

While Constantine is much longer and noticeably flatter than Mother Ivey’s, that gentler gradient can actually work in your favour when the swell is small. On days when Mother Ivey’s struggles to produce rideable waves, Constantine can still offer surprisingly fun skim conditions.

That was exactly the case for our latest session.

Chasing the Waves

With barely any swell reaching Mother Ivey’s, we decided to take a chance on Constantine instead. I pulled into the lower beach car park at around 6pm, grabbed my board and headed down the sand.

Oscar, Mitch and Pete had already made their way to the far end of the beach. From the car park they were barely visible, just a tiny group in the distance, but after a five-minute walk I caught up with everyone and we settled in to see what the tide had in store.

For the first 10–15 minutes there wasn’t much happening. We stood around chatting, comparing sore legs after the UK Skimboard Meet a few days earlier and debating who had recovered the least.

The Tide Turns

As the tide pushed in, everything started to change.

The water reached a steeper bank that had formed naturally along the beach, creating a clean little shore break. Even better, the curve of Constantine Bay meant we could approach the waves from the side rather than straight on.

That side-angle approach made a huge difference. We had less water to cover before reaching the wave, making it easier to generate speed and wrap onto the face. Suddenly, what had looked like an average evening turned into one of those sessions where everything just clicks.

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Wave After Wave

Once the bank switched on, the rides kept coming.

Mitch was absolutely on fire, linking onto a wave on what felt like almost every skim. Pete stayed committed to hunting the bigger sets with his trademark monkey drop before eventually joining the rest of us on the side-angle line as it became too good to ignore.

Oscar and I gradually dialled in our timing and started putting together some quality rides of our own. Every tide seemed to bring another opportunity, and the consistency made it impossible to stop smiling.

Golden Hour Magic

As the evening rolled on, the light became just as memorable as the skimboarding.

We skimmed through golden hour, watched the sun disappear below the horizon and carried on until it was nearly dark, finally calling it a night somewhere between 9:30 and 10:00pm.

To top it all off, Mitch debuted his new self-flying drone, which handled the coastal wind brilliantly while hovering around 60 feet above the beach, capturing some incredible footage of the session.

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Why We’ll Be Back

Sometimes the best sessions aren’t the biggest or the most powerful, they’re the ones where everything comes together.

Small but fun waves, an easy side-angle approach, incredible sunset colours, great friends and hours of non-stop rides combined to make this one of those unforgettable evenings.

I left Constantine Bay with a huge smile on my face and already looking forward to the next session.

If you’ve only ever headed to Mother Ivey’s, don’t overlook Constantine when the swell is small. Under the right conditions, it can be an absolute skimboarding gem.