Surf Trip Marmite

Originality: 1/10
Tubelihood: 7/10
Value 4/10
How: Drive from channel ferryports, fly to Bordeaux, Biarritz, Bilbao.
Why: Everybody else does!
Is there a tournament: Yes! Quik Pro France

SW France, for the tripper is another one of those Marmite affairs. You’ll either go religiously every fucking autumn with your wretched 9 board quiver and a strong sense of entitlement, or go never, ever.

You’re either buying into it, or dismissing it entirely by way of a Gallic shrug pffffffffffffffffffff!

That is because a surf trip to Aquitaine is kinda like a few hours in a nightclub… upon review of the experience, there’s no middle ground.

It must be either really good, or really bad.

A bar or pub or restaurant can be OK, fun-ish, so-so, not bad… but a club must be one extreme or the other, a club was either ‘full of tail’, or a ‘total sausage fest’.

Either really good fun, all there on a plate, or over-priced and hard work, a VIP area that you’re not being let into.

Our own questionable yet earnest advice is this: Find a bank you dig on your first day, and surf it until it either macks out, goes flat or the sand gets washed away. Checking different spots is so passé, driving around getting out the car, doing the little walk, putting your hands behind your head, fingers interlocked, maybe a few handshakes/sneers, back to car, repeat… that’s out.

Staking out is the new checking out. Post up, jump in, jump out, munch on an apple, jump back in. Take your pic-nic, beach cricket set, Kindle, hash, whatever the fook turns you on, stay on the sand.

Crowds will swarm and dissipate with little rhyme or reason, and you, the wise observer, can tune your session(s) around them.