Surf Canaries Arguineguín

The camp

The Beach House is three floors in the middle of Arguineguín, the fishing port on the island's south-west coast, and each floor is a studio for two. The ground floor has a terrace. The first floor has a balcony over the curve of the beach and a bed in an alcove behind a curtain. The top floor climbs over two levels to a private roof terrace looking over the whole village and the ocean, with a string of lights above the armchairs. Throughout: white walls, a proper kitchen with oven and dishwasher, a washing machine, fibre internet, and beach towels provided.

The lessons are Surf Canaries', the school Danny and Annika have run since 2007 on the beach at Playa del Inglés, behind the Maspalomas dunes. You meet at the school around 9:30, tide permitting: a warm-up, some theory at your level, then roughly four hours in the water, no more than five students per instructor, in a beginners' or an improvers' group. Each morning the school picks whichever beach is working for swell, wind and tide, and its van takes the group there. Over the week come surfskate, a lesson on where waves come from, and a video to watch yourself surf. Arguineguín has its own wave too, a point break the school counts among the island's best. The southern water runs from 18 °C in winter to 23 °C at the end of summer.

The price of the quiet is a fifteen-minute drive to the school, there in the morning and back around half past one. No pick-up is offered, so plan on a hire car. It earns its keep in the afternoons too: Puerto de Mogán, the dunes, the mountains, all the things a week in Playa del Inglés tends to skip.

This is a school with somewhere to sleep, not a camp: no meals, no evenings, nobody at the table but the two of you. Arguineguín lives apart from the big resorts, around its harbour, and evenings happen on the roof or along the beach. Right for a couple who want to learn in the morning, shop in the village, and sleep well away from the neon, as long as one of you drives.