Ticket To Ride Surf House

The camp

Coffee comes out at six with bananas, and the tuk-tuk leaves at quarter past: Ticket to Ride runs to a clock. By half past six you are in the water for two hours, and breakfast is waiting at nine. The house is on Galle Road, fifty metres into the jungle, opposite the break called Sticks: six twin or double rooms and three singles, all en suite with air conditioning, a board garage, a video coaching room and quiet corners to work in.

The group trains surf instructors too, and the week reads like a training block. After breakfast comes theory or a video review of the morning session, at half eleven an hour of core work and stretching, and at half three you are back in for a free surf. Five students to a coach at most. The breaks follow the season: reefs from mid-October to mid-May, with the biggest swell in October and November and again in April and May, then Weligama Bay, ten minutes away, once the green season and its afternoon rain arrive. Rams, Midigama's short hollow right, comes in on the days your surfing is up to it.

At four the rooftop bar opens for the sunset. Five dinners are eaten round the shared table, and the village restaurants are a few minutes' walk. The price holds from September to June, and as a pair a private room costs what a shared bed does: £864 each.

For somebody who wants to fly home surfing better, and can live with a six o'clock alarm.