Cornish 15-year-old crowned best young surfer in the world

Surfer Lukas Skinner

(Image credit: Jonny Weeks/Getty Images)

published 20 April 2023

A 15-year-old from Cornwall has been crowned the best young surfer in the world. Lukas Skinner won the under-16 title at Australia’s Rip Curl GromSearch competition, a prestigious award that has never been won by a British surfer before. He started surfing at the age of three, with his father Ben Skinner, an 11-time European longboarding champion who now runs a surf shop in Newquay. “It was so good to go to Australia for the first time and just experience new things,” said Lukas. “I was surfing with the best surfers in the world and to be around them, it was the best thing I could ask for.”

100,000 trees to be planted in the Yorkshire Dales

Conservationists are aiming to create one of the largest native woodlands in England by planting 100,000 trees in the Yorkshire Dales. The plan is part of an £8m Woodland Trust programme to restore 6,000 hectares of woodland habitat in the Dales by 2030. The first saplings will be planted in Snaizeholme valley this weekend; they will include a mix of native broad-leaved species, such as silver birch, willow and rowan, and will be arranged at random without plastic guards.

American visitors are welcomed to Wrexham

The Welsh town of Wrexham is seeing a steady influx of visitors from America, thanks to the success of a TV series about the takeover of Wrexham Football Club by the US actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. One of the team’s new fans, Daysha Lowery from Alabama, said that it wasn’t the celebrity factor that had won her heart, but the series’ depiction of ordinary Wrexham residents. “The people are so kind,” she told The Times. “There’s so much negativity in the world and to be part of a community like this is so uplifting.”