PURE Surfcamps: Surfcamp Weligama

The camp

PURE is a German operator with camps in France, Portugal, Morocco and the Canaries, and it has two houses in Weligama, one at each end of the beach. This one is right on the sand: a big pool, a garden, hammocks and a rooftop bar and restaurant looking over the bay. The evenings for both houses happen here.

You pick a level. Level one gets you standing, level two teaches you to take off on green waves before they break, and guiding is for people who already surf on their own. Four students per instructor at most. The first two levels walk out of the house into the bay: sand underfoot, a left that starts a long way out and works at every tide, and a crowd at your level, because every school on the coast uses it. Guiding goes by tuk-tuk or scooter to about ten nearby breaks, and by boat when the sea allows. One session a day or two: that is what separates the packages.

Breakfast is à la carte, Sri Lankan or Western, and six dinners a week are served on the roof. Evenings bring films projected on that same roof, pool volleyball, boat trips, and an optional bus to the beach parties at Mirissa, ten to twenty minutes away.

The Surfhouse, PURE's other house, costs at least €200 less a week for the same room, but it sits a hundred metres back from the water and has no pool. If you are coming alone and want to be where things happen, sleep here.