The world's longest man-made surf wave has been unveiled in North Wales. It is breaking in an unlikely spot: a village in the Conwy valley in Snowdonia, on the site of an old aluminium factory.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the question below about it.
1. Where does the water in the lagoon come from?
2. How many reservoirs are there at the top of the mountain?
3. How long has the Wave Garden company been working on the project?
4. How long does the wave keep running?
So if you want to surf in the Welsh’s valley, this is where you come. This is filled with (1) rain water. Now I’ll just show you where that comes from. At the top of this mountain here are (2) three reservoirs and the water shoots down these pipes and the power that generates from that goes into the local power station and then the rain water fills up this lagoon here. And it’s this pontoon under which the technology runs to create the waves.
So how is all this possible? And in the command center here it’s Steve Davis, the man who’s made it all work and here we’re gonna see it, Steve, turn on, I believe you’re going to show us how it starts.
Indeed. This is the control console. Beneath the waves is probably the most closely-guarded commercial secret of this project, which is the actual wave foil. And the WaveGarden company has spent six to seven years optimising the shape of that. So not surprisingly that’s the closely-guarded commercial secret. And all I have to do to make it move, and I’m going to move it quite slowly, it’s literally press this button. So let’s see if it works. Presto!
Such a brilliant surfing experience to have a wave every (4) 60 seconds at your fingertips in the Welsh summer, it’s just absolutely fantastic.
Yeah, it’s lovely. It’s really odd … kind of straight towards that kind of metal structure, but it is brilliant, especially up here in this setting.
