{"id":226,"date":"2008-03-21T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-21T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2008-03-21T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-03-21T00:00:00","slug":"trip-1-comes-to-an-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tickettoridegroup.com\/blog\/trip-1-comes-to-an-end\/","title":{"rendered":"Trip 1 comes to an end."},"content":{"rendered":"
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It has finally happened, the past 10 weeks have absolutely flown by, and the first TTRide trip of 2008 has drawn to a close. So before I launch into a full scale essay I thought it would be good to get a small snippet of some of the testimonials (the remainder and longer versions will go on the website at a later date.)??“The best things I have ever done – trip of a lifetime” Charlotte??“Everything I wanted in a Gap Year” Jonty??“Ticket to Ride has made my Gap Year truly worthwhile” Jack??“Completely stoked on surfing… I have made lifelong friends” Max??“There wasn’t one day I didn’t enjoy” Tom??It’s always great to get such positive testimonials and it makes the whole experience truly enjoyable. It only feels like yesterday that I was waving them all off from Heathrow, and now we’re sitting in an empty camp with the majority of the group having returned home, or onto further destinations.??<\/p>\n

The past few days have been spent enjoying the fruits of KwaZulu-Natal. We have taken on the flowrider, which is a standing wave created by water shooting out and hitting a curved rubber wall. You can either body board this, or surf it. Whilst it is a wave it’s a very different experience to surfing, extremely difficult, but a lot of fun! ??We had a great send off party on Wednesday night, Mike and Roz (the Surf camp owners) and Dylan and Viki (their son and his girl-friend) let us in on a secret beach up the coast. We loaded the 4×4’s and drove through incredible African scenery for sometime before we came to a beautiful completely secluded beach. We set up camp here had a traditional braai, and a good bonfire (nothing beats few beers around a campfire!) the stars were shining brighter than ever, and the tunes were coming from Olly and Jonny on their guitars.<\/p>\n

Sam and I said a few words, and Mike and Roz kindly loaded everyone with a fairwell back. This was then followed by a long night back in the surf camp bar. The night was a truly African way to end the trip, nothing too showy just a good group of friends together enjoying each others company and some fantastic hospitality.??Every trip that we run is always a fantastic experience for all the TTRide team aswell as all the people on the adventure. A key factor in the enjoyment of the trips is largely down to the Riders on the course, and how well they all get on. We always select the people we think will not only enjoy the adventure, but also those that share common interests with the other Riders. This group in particular have been a pleasure to organise and get to know and as a team of 16 they stayed a solid unit throughout, and it is clear to see that over the past few weeks they have all become lifelong friends. ??Every individual has been on a journey both mentally and physically, they have all developed and matured in different ways, and having going through all that together creates a strong bond that will be there forever. This team have also all lived up to the TTRide reputation on all fronts. Everyone they have met along the way has commented on what a pleasant group of people they were, kind, courteous and very welcoming. ?<\/p>\n

I’m a big believer that personal experiences can be greatly shaped by the people that you meet along the way, and whether it is the children from the community projects, the SA pro surfer, or the other people on the course everyone will always remember the people that they shared their experiences with. ??The trip ended with the qualifications, some people come on the course purely for this reason, and for others it is simply a bonus for what is a great trip. We have had a very high course pass rate with 13 out of 16 becoming internationally qualified surf coaches, this is no mean feat especially as about half of the group had never surfed before the course (the three who did not qualify have left with 4 out of 5 of the criteria, and have the opportunity to complete the awards when they return to the UK.). ??<\/p>\n

This is a huge testament to each of their determination, the quality of the instruction that they received from the South African Instructors, aswell as the 2 trip leaders, Sam and Chris who led them on the course. With TTRide’s growing reputation and our connections in UK surf schools we will be arranging as many job positions as possible for those keen to put their qualifications to good use, we have already placed 3 at the prestigious Animal Surf Academy in Polzeath.??Within the group we also had 10 who upgraded to the full beach lifeguard award, and I have never seen a bunch of people be so proud to own a pair of red Speedo’s! Olly was so happy with his that we wore them (and only them) in the bar on the final night (a site that some of us would have preferred not to have seen!) ??I would like to take this moment to say a huge thank you to both of the trip leaders. Chris left us in Umtentweni, and has still had a lasting impact on the group, his focus and calm, organisational skills and top quality surf coaching ability made sure that he immediately gained the ultimate respect of every Rider, and really added to their overall experience.??Sam has been an absolute revelation over the past 10 weeks. We all met Sam down in Coffee Bay on last year’s trips and saw then that he would be exactly the right sort of character to get involved in what we offer. Sam comes from a Cornish background, where he runs and owns Freeride surfschool, he has also got a considerable amount of travelling experience at various destinations all over the globe. He is the first TTRide instructor to take a Z-H programme all the way through, and every day has had as much energy as he did at the start. The group affectionately nick named him “Uncle Sam” as he calmly catered for all their needs out of the water.  <\/p>\n

When in the water he sets a high standard of surfing for all the group, and makes sure that with his coaching he pushes each individual as hard as possible, be it with in water tips, or video coaching out of the water. We hope to have Sam involved in multiple trips in the future, and also together have a lot of plans for back in the UK which has kept us talking well into the small hours.??I have no doubts that everybody has experienced, and been introduced to, a lifestyle that they will take with them for many years, and in the sport of surfing found a lifelong passion to give them huge enjoyment, this is always our ultimate goal.??It has been a fantastic 10 weeks, and we hope that you have all enjoyed reading about the day to day adventures of TTRide.??Finally we would like to give a shout out to Sam’s cousin Lucy, our thoughts are with you and we hope that you get well soon.??L\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It has finally happened, the past 10 weeks have absolutely flown by, and the first TTRide trip of 2008 has Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tickettoridegroup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/ttrsaz2hjan0821(1).jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tickettoridegroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tickettoridegroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tickettoridegroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tickettoridegroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tickettoridegroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tickettoridegroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tickettoridegroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tickettoridegroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tickettoridegroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tickettoridegroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}