I’ve just got back from the British Kitesurfing Wave Riding Championships in Gwithian, theoretically I should be there until Sunday this week but things conspired against me.
Namely the atrocious service offered by RingGo, which was enough to push me to the limit before the Sunset Surf Cafe pushed me over the edge and sent me packing.

Do yourself a favour... Never, ever call up these jokers.
The event was the usual shambles, no fault of Pete the organiser who had been given the arduous task by Dicky Gowers who was in Peru, but not having a key to a gate on the first day to get the jet ski to the beach meant we couldn’t start the comp until 2.30pm. Which was a shame as Gwithian was firing out some monsters and the wind was howling. In the end the comp got underway and the girls fleet was run, albeit with the usual dubious judging decisions. Next up at 4.10pm it was the turn of the Pro Men and my fleet to get wet. Sillsy was on the water ready to go, and his opponent for the first heat was on the beach all set. But nothing happened. After half an hour Sillsy was on the beach wondering what was up and it transpired there were no judges to judge the men’s event. So we missed a great day of big waves and ended up running the comp the next day in questionable winds and 2-foot slop.
This is meant to be the pinnacle of UK wave riding, and while the riders were displaying skills befitting of a UK competition the organisation of the competition itself was shocking. 10 years the BKSA have been running events, you’d think by now they would have the know how to put on a good one. Considering the distance many of the riders had travelled it seems a real shame.
Anyway the comp is still on, so they may get better conditions at the weekend and be able to salvage something, but I’d already decided to cut it short as my time could be better spent elsewhere. My plan was to stay around till Thursday and I headed to Gwithian car park to meet up with everyone and have breakfast with Dom Yule and Dom Moore at the Sunset Surf cafe. This was where RingGo reared its ugly head and unravelled a sequence of events that had me back in my own bed before I could say “retarded RingGo”.
The ticket machine wasn’t accepting coins; at least it wouldn’t accept mine anyway. But never fear there are big signs telling you if the ticket machines aren’t working simply call RingGo and pay with your card over the phone. Simple, at least you’d like to think it was! The RingGo system uses a voice recognition program that evidently runs on a ZX Spectrum, it asks you for three pieces of information, rather slowly. Firstly your number plate, then the make of your vehicle and lastly the colour of your vehicle. Once you have given you this information it reads you a long-winded message and then reads you back a random registration number. At this point you have to tell it “no” and indicate it got the rego wrong. This message then sends the ZX Spectrum into a crash with the sounds of buzzing tape decks grinding out code in the background. “Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait after about 5 minutes you recall the 80′s when this sort of thing happened in your best mates bedroom while you were trying to load Pong or some other primitive game you had copied using a TDK C-D120.

This is the hardware that runs the RingGo speech recognition software, it also makes a good doorstop and a paperweight. Handy!
The thinking man at this point restarts the process, calls the number again and speaks in the finest Queens English at RingGo the Retard. Of course you can see where this is going, swimmingly right up until the part where it reads you back the number plate, this time it’s even further from it’s first attempt. Fortunately this time you have the foresight to not wait 5 minutes whilst listening to the “Please Wait” message. So you call again, ensuring the phone is out of the wind and you try your hardest to be as clear as possible. Guess what same result…

This was found outside the RingGo Data centre, apparently they have upgraded to a "floppy disc" system...
This was enough, I’d been plugging away trying to get a ticket for longer than I cared to park. I wrote a note, explaining the situation, stuck it in the window and headed to the Sunset Cafe for some breakfast. Dom and Dommer were there tucking in and it looked lovely, 2 full English’s please was the request that went to the lovely lady behind the counter. “I’ll just check with the chef” was the reply I wasn’t expecting. Much less was I expecting the chef to come out and tell me that breakfast had just finished, but would I like lunch? It was 12.03, breakfast finished at 12pm I had been in the car park for 20 minutes messing about with the fecking parking and now was being denied breakfast on a technicality of the passing of time. You’d think being Cornwall, the fact I’d spent £20 on food in there the day before and was around for the comp all week they might of made an exception. They would do that sort of thing in the North of England you see, so sometimes you kind of expect it. Alas it wasn’t to be and that was enough for me to utter the immortal words. “F**k it, I’m going home…”

Strangely enough the warm embrace of the M25 was a welcome relief from this trip to Kernow...
Dom looked bemused, “what, proper home?” To which I replied, “yes proper home, I’ve had enough of this shit” and with that I turned on my heel and left Cornwall for the Garden of England. I’m not blaming Cornwall for this, no doubt the RingGo ZX Spectrum is housed in a data centre in Slough, and the BKSA have the capacity to cock up events no matter what county they are in. And perhaps the weary staff at the Sunset Cafe just couldn’t bear to go the extra mile for yet another hungry tourist with pockets full of money they want to spend on breakfast.
One thing is for sure though; it was good to get home…