test

New project brings UK potential to 8 wave pools

A new wave pool project in the UK showed up on several British newswires this week. The new Southport Cove Resort will be sandwiched between Blackpool and Liverpool and hopes to draw visitors from the densely populated city of Manchester an hour to the east. The area has been a popular seaside destination for two centuries.

The wave pool will be built on the Merseyside coast by a group called Go Surf. While we couldn’t find a Go Surf website for verification, the company was quoted in media posts saying the surf park would pump £20m into the local economy and attract around 150,000 visitors every year as well as creating 120 new jobs.

The local government website for Sefton says the council has entered into an exclusive agreement with Go Surf and that the year-round attraction will feature a spa, four-star accommodations, restaurants and cafes as well as a 250m long beach, boardwalk and planted gardens.

“Using the next generation of surf pool technology Southport Cove will make waves that can reach over 2 meters for accomplished surfers, to just 0.5 meters for those who prefer ‘fun’ waves,” the council stated on their website.

Artist renderings of the development clearly show Whitewater’s Endless Surf wave pool as the chosen wave-making technology although there is no written confirmation of such.

Endless Surf is a pneumatic system, meaning air is forced into chambers to push out water in the desired effect. The company re-envisioned the standard wave pool shape and hydraulic sequencing to create longer, and potentially more significant waves.

“It’s yet to be proven but looks promising,” Skip Taylor of Surf Park Management told us about Endless Surf. “The pool shape is different. Instead of the diamond Wavegarden shape, this one looks more like a heart shape and can accommodate many people in the water at one time.”

The images of the Southport Cove Resort closely resemble a project in France, La Grande Vague Paris.

A Go Surf spokesperson told one news outlet, “We’re taking a world-class surf pool and building a resort around it that’s far more than just a place for catching waves, something that all visitors and members can enjoy on any given day of the year.”

Other wave pools in the area include Surf Snowdonia and The Wave Bristol. The UK also has wave pools planned for Edinburgh, London, Bournemouth, Milton Keynes and Coleshill near Birmingham. If all goes ahead as planned, Southport Cove will bring Great Britain’s wave pool total to eight.


“wacosurf”