Volkkan Surf Camp

The camp

Volkkan is a holiday-rental agency in Caleta de Famara first, and its surf camp is two of its houses. Each has three bedrooms, and everyone gets a private room, alone or as a pair: there is no dorm. You share the kitchen, the living room and, unless you are in the San Juan room, the bathroom. The first house has a balcony, a Nespresso machine, a shelf of books and board games; the second has a board rack and a washing machine.

Volkkan does not teach. A small family-run school that works with the agency gives the lessons, two to three hours a day, in English, Spanish, French or Italian, for complete first-timers up to intermediates. They happen on Playa de Famara: three kilometres of sand under the Risco cliff, lefts and rights, at every stage of the tide. In winter the swell nearly always turns up and the trade wind spoils it on more days than not; in December, the best month, expect two properly clean mornings in a week. On a foam board a choppy sea is still a lesson. No other break is on the plan: Arrieta, the reef people drive to when Famara is off, is twenty minutes away by car and rarely works.

The water is 18°C in February and 23°C from August to October, and the wetsuit, board and leash come with the lessons. Both houses are under ten minutes' walk from the beach, the supermarkets, the surf shops and the restaurants, so you can leave the car out of the trip.

There are no meals. You cook, or you eat in the village, where the fish restaurants are a couple of streets away. Caleta de Famara is a fishing village with sand for streets and a handful of bars that wind down around midnight, and the agency runs no evenings. For a first week of lessons with a door you can close, it works; if you want to be fed and surrounded, pick a camp with a shared table.