Israel is the sort of place where you had maybe heard there were waves — kind of, sometimes — but where you’d never have imagined there could be waves of real quality — clean, powerful waves arriving in neatly formed lines, separated by more than a few metres and lasting for more than a few seconds.

But at Sokolov Beach in Nahariya on the 14th of January this year, the surf looked insanely, agonisingly, unbelievably fun. True, it may not happen very often, and some have suggested that these were the best conditions ever witnessed in the country; nonetheless, there would have been few better places in the world to go surfing last Wednesday. As luck would have it — for the competitors at any rate, probably not for everyone else — the swell happened to coincide with the Billabong Up North 2015. Enjoy.