How 100 volunteers fed 1,600 lifesavers at Holywell Bay

A giant gilded picture frame appeared on the sand at Holywell Bay last week, propped up against a sunset sky and a line of Surf Life Saving GB flags. For seven days it framed one of the biggest gatherings the beach has ever seen, competitors soaked to the bone, volunteers in hi-vis, and, by the final evening, half the club queuing up for a photo underneath it.

Behind that picture lies a genuinely enormous community effort. Around 1,600 competitors, a small army of volunteers, and enough burgers to feed a small town went into what Holywell Bay Surf Life Saving Club is calling its biggest ever national beach championships.

A week of racing, from age eight to nearly eighty

Running Saturday to Saturday, the national championships turned the bay into a full week of sprints, 1k runs, sea swims, board paddles and more, all built around the skills that go into being a beach lifeguard. Competitors ranged from eight years old to nearly eighty, all taking on the same stretch of sand and surf.

The scale of it caught even the organisers by surprise. Competitors travelled in from all over Cornwall and from as far away as Norfolk and Northumberland to take part, filling the car parks, the campsite and the beach itself for the best part of a fortnight either side of the competition dates.

The numbers that made it the biggest yet

Some of the totals from the week are hard to picture. Around 1,600 competitors took part in total. A team of roughly 100 Holywell Bay volunteers gave up hundreds of hours between them, covering everything from driving and carpentry to baking, running the barbecue, photography, design work, and, for a few of them, playing steel drums and singing to keep the atmosphere going. Surf Life Saving GB supplied its own marshals, officials and safety crew to keep the competition itself running smoothly, day after day.

Then there is the food. The barbecue team served an incredible 2,000 burgers, 1,000 hot dogs and 1,200 breakfast rolls over the week. The cafe crew, working just as hard, poured more than 1,300 hot chocolates and got through over 2,500 cakes, many of them baked by Holywell Bay volunteers themselves.

A hundred volunteers, and the crew who kept it all running

It is easy to watch a week of racing and see only the competitors, but the logistics behind it were, by most accounts, the real feat. Kit had to be dropped off, ferried across the beach and collected again every single day, on top of marshalling, catering, car parking and everything else a week-long national competition throws up. That fell almost entirely to the Holywell Bay volunteer team, alongside the Surf Life Saving GB officials keeping the sporting side of things fair and safe.

And the winners are…

Amid all the sprints, swims and paddles, three clubs came out on top in their respective age groups. Bude scooped the Masters win, Hayle bagged the Youth championships, and Woolacombe took the Nippers crown. Congratulations are due to every single competitor who took part in what is, by any measure, an incredibly challenging sport.

Thank yous, from neighbours to sponsors

Holywell Bay Surf Life Saving Club was quick to spread the thanks well beyond its own volunteers. Local residents got a mention for putting up with a very busy week of extra traffic and interrupted dog walks. On the supplies side, Chapmans Butchers in Perranporth was singled out for coping with constantly increasing orders as the week went on.

Sponsors DryRobe, Rattler, Stride Treglown and Trevornick all helped make the week happen, while the National Trust was thanked for allowing the event on its land, along with the car park team who found themselves pulled into the chaos of it all.

And then there was the raffle. Donations ranged from Unique Home Stays to Celtic & Co, and local generosity turned into more than £12,000 raised across 25,000 entries.

What the club, and the visitors, had to say

Holywell Bay Surf Life Saving Club Chairman Steve Pecks summed up the week for the team behind it. “I am so proud of our team for what we have achieved together over the last few months, building to an event which I think blew all of our socks off,” he said.

“We hope everyone who came, competed, supported, marshalled, supplied or otherwise helped to make this happen, enjoyed being part of such an incredible community event. The feedback we have received has been overwhelming and I know the team are enjoying reading each thank you, each grateful comment, and even poems of thanks posted to our socials.”

That feedback has been pouring in from visiting clubs too. Ben Rook, from Saunton Sands SLS, wrote: “Thank you all so much for the effort your club members put in to make the event work like magic. From the people welcoming when you dropped off kit to the people ferrying all your daily kit from the drop off, taking kit off the beach was a breeze. Everyone of the Holywell Bay team deserves a medal for putting on such a fantastic event.”

Carys Perkins, whose family has been coming to Holywell Bay since the club last hosted in 2018, wrote: “Thank you for a truly amazing week Holywell Bay Surf Life Saving Club. From the masters to the nippers your club put on the most wonderful experience. I cannot even imagine getting my head around the logistics or the amount of hours people put in volunteering to ensure we were all able to come and enjoy the week of competition and fun. Holywell bay has been our favourite place since you hosted in 2018 and this year only made it better for us! Diolch.”

And for Sally Foster, part of the Woolacombe Nipper team, it was a first. “Thank you so much to everyone at Holywell for creating such a great atmosphere and having such friendly volunteers who often went above and beyond for us all,” she wrote. “We are part of the Woolacombe Nipper team and you have helped us make beautiful memories at our family’s first National competition, creating memories for life.”