Four Feet of Wood, No Wetsuit Preferred, and a Panel of Judges Scoring Something Called Stoke

The World Bellyboard Championships are held on a Cornish beach in September, most recently at Great Western Beach in Newquay on the twentieth. A date for this year has not been announced.

The equipment rule is the entire sport. Boards must be wooden, roughly four feet long by one foot wide, which is the plywood bellyboard British holidaymakers used before foam and fibreglass arrived and made the category obsolete. No leash, no fins on the board, no modern hardware of any kind.

Wetsuits are permitted but riding without one is encouraged, in Cornwall, in September, in the Atlantic. A good number of competitors take that up, and a good number of them do it in tweed.

There are men's and women's divisions, over-sixties divisions for both, under-twelves for both, and a separate session for riders using flippers. Waves are scored from nought point one to ten on flow, style, length of ride and stoke, which makes it the only competition that formally grades enthusiasm.

The absence of a leash is what makes it a real event rather than a costume one. A wooden board that gets away travels a long way at speed and has to be swum after, so competitors ride conservatively and finish their waves, which is roughly the opposite of what modern surf judging rewards.

The organisers run it as a fundraiser and have done for years. The date usually lands on a Saturday in the second half of September.