Torren Martyn - LOST TRACK ATLANTIC - Episode 1 - needessentials

The plan for Ishka and I was to buy an old work van and spend three months following our noses from northern Scotland to West Africa. The coastline and landscapes would range from freezing cold oceans in the far north through barren deserts all the way down to the lush African tropics. We hoped to score some incredible waves, submerse ourselves in the rich history and experience one of the most culturally diverse regions of the world. Ishka and I are best mates and it all started for us here on the east coast of Australia. We both share a passion for surfing and adventure and we've spent the last few years travelling overseas making surf films together. Growing up in Australia has shaped our lives around the ocean and we both try to live in a way that keeps us connected to nature, our friends, families and the community that we live in. Where I find myself, I feel being a surfer is essentially a lifelong study of the natural world. Ishka and I plan our lives around finding waves and spend so much time learning the geography of a place, the winds, swells and tides, that when we manage to get a good day of waves here at home, it's one of the most rewarding feelings in the world. My connection to the ocean, land and community where I grew up has given me so much purpose and meaning. I'm so grateful to call this place home. Indigenous Australians have such an amazing connection to this place. I'm inspired by their deep knowledge and values. I love listening to my mate Mick when he shares these values with me and what it truly means to call a place home. When we as people come together in camps, it allows us to share and connect with each other in nature. When we do this, we can build better relationships with ourselves, with the people that sit at our camp and our communities. It's part of our responsibility and obligation to keep that camp within yourself wherever you go. It's not a black or white thing. It's all part of the human experience of spending time in country and building a relationship with her because it shares so much with you. Just like our old people have done for tens of thousands of years. Some of my favourite moments in life have been sitting around a campfire with friends and being surrounded by the ocean and Mother Nature. I'm incredibly thankful to call Australia home, but it's always nice to experience new places in the world. The trip started in England and we spent the first week fitting out this Ford Transit that we picked up for about £2,000. We get a little bit of an angle. Who sleeps like a plank anyway? I can't believe we got all that material. This. Perfect. Four boards you reckon? Four boards in there. Up down here. Alright, all the plans are drawn up. Yep, so we're pretty much ready to go. What do you reckon? Now how do you draw it? What colour's that light? It's red. What's that mean? I don't know, red's always bad isn't it? The fit out of the van was pretty rough. Our priorities were to have a secure place for the valuables, storage for surfboards and as much room as possible to hang out in when we needed to get out of the weather. Can't not get this can we? What do you think? Perfect? Perfect. You get a bit of room by your feet too. A bit more, a bit more. Really? Yep, keep to it. Bed one, in. Good luck. Bed comfy. Oh yeah. How you doing up there? Fantastic. We are going to go get a service. Hopefully everything checks out and we should be on the road. Let's get it out of here. I can't get it in now. Doing it again. And this is f***ed. Fully f***ed. Exit the roundabout. Continue straight. Oh yeah. F***ed. Stress marks. First traffic light, the clutch got stuck to the floor and it couldn't go anywhere. Couldn't put it into gear or out of gear or forward or backwards or anything. Good start. Well it's got character. That was stressful. That was stressful. No insurance. No clutch it feels like. We'll see. All that was holding that in was where it was just inside on the engine there. So that's why it's rattled around there. So if that had let go, just let the chain go slack. Oh yeah, it would have been game over with that, definitely. And then that's the clutch. Yeah, that's all new in there as well. Yeah, all sorted. We spent the last week preparing the car for the next three months on the road and the final box we needed to tick was the MOT and insurance and have it all checked off by the mechanic. We had troubles with the clutch which ended up being we needed to replace the whole clutch and the timing belt and rust. A huge panel of rust out of the bottom. Sort of threw us right off guard. We thought we were going to be driving out of here a couple of days ago. I can't believe it. I fully can't believe we're actually driving out of here with a sound car. We were pretty quickly becoming to know the van's temperamental personality and we ended up spending more money to get her on the road than we'd bought her for in the first place. She was starting to remind us of a lady we'd met a few days earlier. So we thought it to be pretty fitting to name her Donna. Pretty dreamy first night camping. The view from our front door is a beautiful stone wall. Is that the stone, James? Is that your wall? Oh yeah, it's a bed. Oh yeah, it's comfy. Night night. So why is it not going to say anything? Finally, with a couple of miles under our belt and the car troubles behind us, it felt so good to get out of suburbia and into the hills. We wound our way through a beautiful national park and found a perfect little spot for the night with no one around. We were feeling pretty happy with ourselves. I was tripped out situation. We parked in this beautiful national park here last night, set up, thinking we were just like absolutely no one around. We could hear all this like banter through the night and just thought it was, I don't know, other campers and stuff in our zone. And we sort of just had ourselves all tripped out and woke up and all fenced off, parked in and with tape around us. And apparently there's a car race or something going on this morning. There's people lining all the hills and waiting for race cars. Thought we were fully blocked in and we're about to get robbed. We've been hanging in the car all morning, too scared to get out. Look where we are. A car race. Oh my god. There's another one. So tranquil. We were pretty tripped out by that whole scene, but we were finally on our way to the coast and all the conditions were looking just right for a fun day of surf the next morning. As they say, all good things come to those who wait. Not that we really had a choice. Pretty short cut we got here. We're going to go surfing. First surf in Ireland. We were starting to settle into our new home on wheels and it felt so good to get in the water and rinse off the grease from the last couple of weeks. It's funny how just one surf can reset your energy and wash everything else away. Morning. We're surfers so we've been looking for waves and there's some really nice waves around here. Waves? Yeah. Women? No waves, like in the ocean when you arrive. Waves. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My name's Ishka and I found out that that means water. Yeah? Yeah. Ishka is an Irish word. Yeah. That means water. Yeah. Throughout our time in Ireland we felt nothing but warmth from the locals and it was really special to connect to a place that has such a rich history and so much beauty. It was time for us to start making our way to Scotland and even though we didn't quite get the waves we were hoping for, it's always nice leaving a place on a high note wanting more. Donna's been losing radiator cooling fluid. The diagnosis is that we need to have the water pump replaced. We're going to go to Scotland tonight, however long. We are on the road, just had the water pump replaced and we're driving to Scotland. Anything you'd like to say to the camera, Ishka? What a beautiful day in Ireland. What a beautiful day today. We are on the ferry from Ireland to Scotland. The emergency alarm has just been sounded. We may be going down. Life jackets are currently padlocked in a cage. But, I don't know, trust in the transit. It's been good to us so far. We'd hardly rolled off the ferry and were stunned by the beauty of Scotland. The snow-capped mountains and freezing weather. It really felt like we were such a long way from home. We hadn't seen the ocean in days and we'd kind of given up hope of getting waves. But when we stumbled across a wave that morning, I was moving as fast as I could, basically tripping over my own feet to get out there. See how good that is? Oh my God. By the time I was in the water, the tide had completely dropped out of it and the waves were hardly surfable. I'd tweaked my knee the last time I was in Europe about 10 years earlier, which forced me to return home. I gave my knee a pretty hard whack on that wave and the last thing I wanted was another trip-ending injury. Luckily it ended up just being a bit of a knock, nothing too serious. Look, my fins are hitting the bottom out there on waves and ----, look at that. There's grief in the table. I'm lucky I didn't break my neck, do you see how I was? Yeah. I was like looking at just like a rock, a corpus. Seeing the wetty, eating the past year with tour buses going past in the smallest row ever. Between our mad dashing of surf checks, we decided to check out the infamous Puffin Cove, which, to our unknowing, had not a single puffin in it at this time of year. I don't think this is fun. Is it good? It's going wild. Well, you can see I've nailed that one pretty well. Well, this is darn lovely. Yeah, should we get out of here? That's me. That was exciting, huh? So miserable out there. Why? Oh, it's so warm in here too. At least I get to put my wetsuit on, you're going to be wet. And it's dry, you're going to be wet, huh? The days became shorter as we moved further north, and the massive tides meant we'd only get little windows if we were lucky. That morning, we woke up to howling offshore winds and pumping waves at our doorstep. I was so psyched to finally get to surf this wave. Surfing alone and understanding a new wave is always so exciting, but can also be so challenging to find rhythm. I copped a few floggings, and before I could make too much sense of it all, I broke my two favourite boards, and the conditions had changed so fast. I remember that session just being one of those ones that I'd love to have again and again. But I guess that's the beauty of surfing, you never really get to have the same day twice. New game. Loops. What are we going to call it? Simple game. Throw the hoop onto the loop. Three throws on the hook is a point. Up in the trough... Not a point. Oh, it's fun. At least. Oh, my God! It's happened! Congratulations, how do you feel? Oh, pretty good. Just, um, like to thank... Oh, I got this one! Did you? Is that? Oh, my God. Some nights were well into the minuses, and with no insulation in the van, there'd be little icicles on the ceiling from our condensation. Our wetsuits hardly ever had the chance to dry, and some mornings, regardless of how nice the view was, it took a lot of motivation to get out of bed. I just saw like a really clean looking ocean, and waves. That is totally foreign. We've just been chilling all morning. What have we been doing all morning? Oh, eating porridge. How are you feeling? Are you cold? Yeah. I realise it's like snowing right now. That river water is so much colder than the ocean. Like, really cold, man. Face is all numb. Yeah, you can't even talk properly. Oh, that was great fun. I can't believe I did that all to myself, hey. How was that? That was unreal. Such a hoot. That was so nice. Time to get some waves. Yeah, get some waves. Let's get out of the snow rain. Visiting Ireland and Scotland for the first time was pretty mind-boggling. We felt so lucky to get to experience such a beautiful part of the world. Even though we got off to a bit of a rocky start with Donna, we still managed to wiggle our way around and get some great waves, met some amazing folks, and got to experience a part of the world that was so different to where we are from. If I've learnt anything from travelling, it's that we are all visitors somewhere, and that as long as you don't let yourself get too rattled by the small things, be kind and respectful to the places and people along the way, then the whole experience will be so much more enriching. After hearing about a rumoured swell rolling its way through the Atlantic Ocean, we made a pretty wild decision that consequently meant we'd miss the majority of Europe and drive more or less 3,000 miles non-stop from North Scotland to the African coast of Morocco. We were so torn by the decision that the thought of flawless right-hand point breaks combined with the swell of a decade was irresistible. It was a big call and an outlandishly long drive, but as a surfer, what else do you do? It's five in the morning. I've had half an hour's sleep. I feel so heavy. I feel weird. Abra, there are no boats from... That's so heavy. They are operating right now. All right, let's go. We are boarding a big brick. Checked it for long enough. Oh, did you see that? This is the best moment of my life.