PURE Surfcamps Tenerife

The camp

PURE's Tenerife house is in Tacoronte, on the north coast, in a residential pocket among vineyards and fields. It is the only camp on the north of the island: every other one is in the south, at Costa Adeje, Las Américas or El Médano. A white villa under cypress trees, a pool, a terrace, and a 180-degree view of the sea, wide enough to read the ocean before breakfast. Alex Zirke, a big-wave surfer and former German champion, runs it with Tanessa Dalby, who trained in education and clinical psychology. Eight rooms: a four-bed dorm, two twin rooms, three doubles with their own bathroom, a single, and a suite with a bathtub and a balcony over the garden.

Here the week is sold without surfing. It covers the room, a breakfast buffet every morning, one barbecue, one yoga session and one wine and cheese evening. Lessons are added on site, over three or five days, with no more than three students to an instructor, in German, English or Spanish, and the shuttle leaves from the front door. A couple where only one of you surfs pays for one course.

The north is the island's other face. In the south-west the volcano shelters the coast from the north-east trade wind; up here the coast takes that wind, and it faces the winter swell that comes down from the north-west. The waves break on black sand beaches between old lava flows and over rock at the foot of the cliffs. The school does not name its spots: each morning it picks the place and the time from the tide, the swell and the wind. On an ordinary day the van takes you wherever the swell is arriving without the wind tearing it up, and the lesson follows the tide rather than the clock. The good day is a winter morning with no trade wind, a long swell getting the whole coast working, and someone who has surfed far bigger telling you where to sit. In summer the trade wind blows onto this coast and the session is an early one. The island's water drops to 18 °C in February. Beginners learn here in very small groups, but rock is never far away: this side of the island suits someone who already stands up.

Tacoronte is a quiet wine town well away from the southern resorts, and evenings start at the house: the pool, the barbecue, the wine and cheese night. To eat out, the fishermen's association restaurant serves the day's fish, and a few tapas bars cover the rest. There is no nightlife on the doorstep; for that, La Laguna, a university town, is a quarter of an hour's drive. The house suits someone who already surfs a little, would rather have a villa than a resort, and is fine paying for lessons separately. For southern sun and a line-up you can walk to, pick a camp in Las Américas.