https://www.thetimes.com/article/what-i-learnt-about-flexible-working-in-the-nhs-7gm698ptt Nick Hounsfield, 48, founded The Wave, an inland surf park that opened its first site in Bristol in 2019. Starting with the idea and £500, over a ten-year period he raised £30 million to build it and ensure it survived the lockdowns. He now plans six more sites, including one proposed for the Lee Valley, London. In February 2020, aged 46, he suffered a series of strokes that caused him to temporarily lose his speech.
I was playing hockey and suddenly found I couldn’t follow the ball
My grip then started to go on my hockey stick. It all felt like an out-of-body experience, like I was watching myself from slightly above. I knew I needed to get to safe space so I marched off the pitch and sat in the dugout, staring into space.
People started asking if I was all right. When I wanted to say something to them I couldn’t get any words out. Looking back I was just terrified. A few people realised I was displaying signs of having a stroke.
That was the start of the next chapter in life for me
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Because I was relatively young for having a stroke and because the NHS was massively under-resourced at that time [at the beginning of the pandemic] I didn’t get responded to in time. I wasn’t triaged well. I had the medication given too late, which in turn meant I ended up having a series of nearly eight strokes. I’m not casting dispersions on the NHS. It’s just a factor of a massively pressured organisation.
A week later they started to lock down the hospitals a bit and they sent me home. Unfortunately I didn’t get any resources to help me because I couldn’t have visitors, no speech or physiotherapists coming to my house. So a lot of my recovery was self-directed.
That tapped into my resourcefulness, as I had spent ten years having to research stuff for The Wave about which I had absolutely no idea. I knew how to find those resources and be able to look after my own health. There was a little bit of trial and error, but luckily there are organisations like The Stroke Association that have amazing resources online.
I thought rehabilitation was about pushing hard the whole time
I was trying so desperately to improve that actually it ended up being the thing that held me back. I was getting really tired, doing too much. I realised that when I rested during the day, I woke up much fresher, with much better clarity of thought and perspective.
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It taught me that you can try so hard to improve and progress that you don’t step back and give yourself some space to either think, to heal, or to recharge. I realised how important that was for me, particularly for my mental health, to have some perspective and not always be in the doing, but being more strategic. Yes, you do need to do work to progress, but you also need that time to rest and reflect.
No one knows why I had a stroke, but I am sure that long-term, deeply immersed, detailed focus over ten years [on bringing The Wave to fruition] probably fried my brain a bit. I never got away from it.
Where am I now? Physically, that came back fairly quickly. It was mainly my speech and my ability to process my speech that took time, probably nine months. I had to adapt. Now I am 85 per cent there. Maybe it will keep improving, maybe it won’t.
Things happen in a start-up business that require adaptability, future facing optimism and a healthy culture. That is what has allowed us to weather the last couple of years, both as The Wave and me personally.
When we opened The Wave it really got bogged down in the detail
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Some of the reason I was very stressed before having the stroke was that when the site became operational it felt like some of the essence of how I thought it was going to pan out wasn’t quite there.
Doing something for the first time is a real adjustment. It is like before you have a baby, the blissful perfection of how you envisage it being. And then finding, oh my goodness, they are not acting in the way you want them to.
I am now surrounded by talented people who have been in this kind of industry before, either big hospitality, leisure, or visitor destinations. What I realised when returning was that I could add the difference in asking: why would we and could we be different from any other visitor destination out there? It came back to why we wanted to build The Wave in the first place. It was not about building a surf park. It was actually about bringing health and happiness to as many people as possible.
What we do not want to be is a white-middle class playground. We want the whole place to be accessed by people of all ages, all backgrounds and all abilities. To create a space where people feel it is a refuge, a place to relax, and also a place to get fit and be really regenerative.
It is not simply about a transaction: we are going to give you some waves and you are going to give us some money for it. It is much more about creating that cohesive community, and trying to tackle some of the issues that I think society has in terms of lack of diversity and equality in work, in sport and in health.
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Water helped with the recovery process
During the first couple months of my recovery I went down to The Wave, watering plants and cleaning the lake. When I got into the water I realised I felt so much better for being in water, around water.
Every time I was getting in, swimming and doing some immersion, I was feeling better and better. There is a lot of research about how being close to and in water is healthy for people’s mental health. I could clearly see myself how it was lifting my spirits. It was helping me recover and refreshing my mind. I really believe that blue light of perfect waves is invigorating for people’s neurology.
Nick Hounsfield was talking to Richard Tyler, editor of the Times Enterprise Network
