Surfing at Surfcastle in Baleal, Portugal
I've actually got an excuse for the couple of weeks silence around here - I was on holiday!
In Surfcastle, I think I've found a place I'll go back to over and over, year after year.
Before I go on - please check out my Surfcastle 2008 Flickr Photoset/album - it speaks volumes, more than I could in this post.
It's a big, beautiful old house in the village of Baleal, which happens to be one of the top surf spots in Portugal, if not Europe.
What makes Surfcastle isn't just the location or the perfect surfy house - the people who run it are completely awesome.
Our surf coaches for the week, Dan and Ginjes were so helpful and so keen to help us improve and coach us almost one-to-one. There are heaps of surf camps that do lessons of 50 people plus, but not the Surfcastle guys. We had Ginjes and Dan between 6 or 7 of us most days!
Joao, Elfie and Laura were the perfect hosts, making sure we were extremely well fed and looked after.
The whole experience was a little bit perfect to be honest. A tiny, quiet village out of tourist season. A really hard but addictive new sport to learn. Beaming sunshine away from cold, dark England. Most of all, meeting some absolutely amazing people who just want to kick back, have a little fun and surf.
As far as the surfing itself goes, I love it! I got the hang of it slowly but surely, but it's definitely he hardest sport I've ever turned my hand to. The constant paddling, watching the waves, balance and timing make it almost impossible to nail in the beginning, but as I touched on earlier we had two brilliant coaches who worked hard to make sure we understood how to nail it.
So by the end of the week, we were exhausted from the sun, beer, partying and most of all surfing - there's nothing like coming home from holiday feeling knackered by wanting more.
It won't be long before I'm back at Surfcastle, and that's a promise!
