Red Star Surf

The camp

Red Star puts its students up in three houses in Caleta de Famara, and every room is private: no dorms. Casa del Mar is on the seafront, fifty metres from the beach, with a terrace that looks at the ocean and the Risco cliff. Casa 55, two hundred metres back, has a roof terrace with the same view. Casa del Sol has only three bedrooms and stays quiet. In most rooms the bathroom is shared. Fans rather than air conditioning, and the houses are cleaned every day.

The lesson starts at 10 am at the shop on the main street, and the van takes the group to the beach. Famara is three kilometres of sand under the Risco, lefts and rights, at every stage of the tide. In winter the swell is nearly always there and the trade wind ruins it on more days than not, mostly in the afternoon, so when the morning looks better the lesson moves to 9, with word the evening before. Easy gives you two hours in the water a day, Performance four, with video review on every lesson day. Groups are reshuffled by level each morning, usually five to an instructor. The water is 18°C in February and 23°C from August to October, and the wetsuit is provided.

There are five lesson days a week, never on the day you arrive or leave, so three nights buys only two days in the water. Come for a week and you get five. The packages are built for beginners and intermediates; an experienced surfer gets steered towards private lessons. The family package takes children from six. Guests come from all over Europe, mostly aged 25 to 45, solo, in couples or with friends. If you come across Surf and Yoga Camp Lanzarote or Famara Power Surf, those are the same houses.

No meals, not even breakfast: each house has its own kitchen, and evenings are either a shared dinner or everyone doing their own thing. Yoga costs extra and runs at 6:30 pm four evenings a week. Fish restaurants, tapas bars, a pizzeria and cafés are three to five minutes' walk. Caleta de Famara is a fishing village with sand for streets, and its few bars wind down around midnight. People come for the water. To really learn in a week without looking for a party, this is the place.