Surf camps in Gran Canaria

In Gran Canaria the first question is not which camp but which coast. The island learns at La Cícer, the sandy end of Las Canteras in the middle of Las Palmas, and three camps are a walk from the water there: Mojo Surf, Oceanside and FEEL. You learn over sand, the board is yours in the afternoon, and the promenade eats late. None of the three serves a meal: you cook in the house or eat out, which in a city of four hundred thousand people is no hardship.

What sets them apart is the school. Mojo belongs to Eduardo Acosta, three times Spanish champion: lessons split by level, seven students at most per instructor, a house of its own, €515 a week in a dorm. Oceanside teaches its own lessons and lets you pick your bed from its neighbours, anything from a dorm facing the beach to a four-star hotel, from €330 in a hostel. FEEL is an agency that pairs a bed at La Ventana Azul hostel with lessons from Brisa Surf School, from €495, and runs four group nights a week. If you are coming alone and want company from the first evening, that is the one.

Outside the city there are two houses with nothing in common. Dreamsea restored a house from 1902 in Moya on the north coast: private rooms only, breakfast and five dinners a week, and a half-hour shuttle to the lesson. It is the most expensive, from €1,025 a room for seven nights, and the right call for a couple or a family who would rather have a beautiful quiet house than a dorm in town. High Voltage, at Playa del Hombre on the east coast, teaches on the black-sand beach below its terrace, ten minutes from the airport, from €497 in a dorm. The neighbourhood is residential and evenings happen at the house.

Then the south. Surf Canaries has run its school at Playa del Inglés since 2007 and houses students at two addresses: a flat with a pool two minutes from the school, €348 each for three people with three days of lessons, or three studios for two in Arguineguín, a fishing port fifteen minutes' drive away, from €325, where you will want a car. These are schools with beds rather than camps: no meals, no organised evenings, but the driest and sunniest side of the island.

The season is the same everywhere. La Cícer works from October to March, and December is its best month, with about four good days in a week; in summer the north coast goes flat and the schools make do. The water never drops below 18 °C and reaches 23 °C at the end of summer. For a first week, winter in Las Palmas is the safest bet.