The Cold Surfers of Unstad

You hear Unstad before you see it: the road drops through a cut in the rock and the noise of the North Atlantic comes up to meet you.

There were nine surfers out. Nine. Two degrees in the water, minus six on the sand, and a tidy little queue forming at the peak like it was Biarritz in August. One of them came in, pulled the hood back, and was maybe sixteen.

We watched for an hour with the engine running and the heater on, which I am not proud of.