The Big Idea

Working at Wavelength, the longest running surf magazine in the UK, there is a lot of office banter and arguments about just how good the waves around the coastline of Britain get. One such discussion, this time about which British county had the best waves, got us thinking about how many coastal counties in Britain are actually surfable. A non-surfer would most likely name Cornwall as the prime shire for riding waves, whereas those of us who love this sport and have enjoyed waves in England, Scotland and Wales, would probably add Yorkshire, Caithness and Pembrokshire to that list... but is that it? I count 46 counties in Britain that have coastline, so surely most of those get swell that is surfable now and then?

Straight away I can foresee some counties that are unlikely to get much in the way of peeling waves, but this project, which has very quickly become something that I can't stop thinking about, is more of an investigation rather than a challenge... I want to know for certain that you can't surf in Cheshire.

So this blog is not only meant as a diary of my trips, successes and failures around the British coastline, but also, and more importantly, as a call out for help, advice and tip offs for when those rarer, surf-starved counties are about to start firing. If Anglesey is going to go nuts, I need to be there!