Soul & Surf Sri Lanka (Cove)

The camp

Soul & Surf put its nine rooms on a private cove, each a few metres from the water. A gate at the end of the garden lets you out onto the sand, the yoga shala faces the ocean, and the Canteen café-bar is in the house. It sits on the main road, a little out of the way, five minutes from the centre of Ahangama.

An easy left breaks in the cove right in front of the rooms, a wave for your first days that you can watch from bed. The rest of the coast is five minutes away once you move up, transport included. Lessons run in the mornings Sunday to Friday with Wednesday off, and in the afternoons a guide takes out anyone who wants another go. Four levels, one condition: you can swim. Between sessions come workshops on the ocean and on how a line-up works, plus five video reviews.

Breakfast every day, five lunches and five dinners with a drink are included, and so are seven yoga classes. The week opens with a cocktail and closes with the Friday barbecue. The house calls itself more grown up than a standard surf camp, and it is priced that way. The green season week, at £700, falls while the south-west monsoon is blowing on this coast; it keeps the lessons, the guiding and the yoga, but not the dinners.

For anyone past their dorm years, alone or as a couple, who wants to learn with the wave at the foot of the room.