Surfing Holidays to France and South Africa
Surf Holidays
8 weeks till France surf trip
02 years ago
Its only 8 weeks to go till our next surf holiday!
We will be driving the minibus down from Newquay to Portsmouth on the 7th September. We cross the English Channel to Le Havre by ferry. We then drive down to Seignosse near Hossegor in South West France The journey is about 700 miles!
It’s very picturesque, passing through some amazing French regions, past the towns of Nantes, Niort, Bordeaux, and down to Seignosse.
This topFrench location is in the region of Landes. The area has an interesting history, and was not always so welcoming! The Landes region is flat and the soil is uniformly sandy. One hundred years ago, the land was a boggy swamp filled with disease and the coastline was unstable.
The law imposed by Emperor Napoleon III in 1857, ordered all the communes of Gascogne Landes, not just the coastline, be drained and then planted with maritime pines, making the land useable and rich. Bit by bit, pines covered Les Landes, changing the landscape and reducing the expanse of more than 100,000 hectares of moors. This made room for the young forest that would become one of the largest industrial forests in Europe. The dunes were also created to protect the newly recovered land from the sea.
Today the region is really beautiful; made up of large plantations and a coastline of flat sandy beaches, backed by large shifting sand dunes which are nature conservation areas.
All this work means that we can reach all those surf breaks along the coast, and we can enjoy the land of Landes too!
If you’d like to join us click on the link to the right ‘Book a surf trip to France’ to see full holiday details.
Wave periods and groundswell
02 years ago
In our last article we looked at the creation of waves in the North Atlantic by low-pressure systems. Today we will consider what happens as the waves approach our shores.
Now that the waves have been created (the swell) they keep on travelling across the ocean until they reach land and the wave energy is released in the form of breaking waves on the beach or cliffs
The further the swell travels from the weather system that created it, the more the waves spread out. This time between each crest is called the ‘wave period’. That is; the time taken for each wave to reach the same point as the last wave. For example if you are sitting on your surfboard out back you can easily count the seconds between each wave passing under your board. Those seconds translate into the wave period.
Swell that has travelled away from the weather system that created it is usually termed ‘ground swell’ and will have a wave period in the range of 10 – 20 seconds. A swell that has travelled for just 2 or 3 days would have a wave period of around 10 – 14 seconds. Swell that has travelled for up to a week could have a period of 16 – 20+ seconds. Obviously the longer the wave period the better for surfing!
Swell will travel approximately 250-300 miles per day, but there are weather factors that will have affects on swell as it travels. For example strong cross winds, that is; winds blowing across the wave, can destroy a ground swell as can strong head winds; winds blowing head-on into the wave. Strong head winds can drastically reduce the swell size.
Swell generally travels across the ocean best with calm weather conditions. These conditions are usually associated with large areas of high pressure. With the right conditions, perfectly lined up ground swell will arrive, and if your local beach has no wind or light off-shore winds (more on this later) when this ground swell turns up, the waves should be perfectly shaped. Surfing bliss!
What makes waves?
02 years ago
In the first of our series of articles about how the weather affects surfing, we look at what causes our swell in the South West of Britain;
Low pressure systems
As you know the UK is situated on the Eastern side of the North Atlantic Ocean. Out at sea there is a lot of activity in the weather. Understanding how the weather works will help you see how waves are formed.
Our UK waves are formed by low pressure systems. To find out about low pressure systems and how they are created, we need to first consider what is happening to air pressure across the world.
No prizes for guessing that the equator is hotter than the rest of the planet, so we can also guess that over the equator the air is heated. This air rises, and is replaced by cooler air from the poles. These pockets of air are called ‘highs’ and ‘ lows’.
Low pressure areas suck in air from hotter areas. When a pocket of warm and cooler air meet the hot air passes over the top, which lowers the pressure, and makes the air spin. Low pressures spin anti-clockwise and highs clockwise. As you can imagine, in winter, when the difference in temperatures is greater, these low pressures are more dynamic and the air spins faster.
In the Atlantic the pattern we see is a low pressure system predominantly coming from the South West heading North East for our Western coastline. Why does it go this way? Well, its all down to the jet-stream. This is the name for the flow of air at high levels in the atmosphere. The jet stream travels faster than the air lower down in our atmosphere, where the highs and lows are moving. The jet stream moves West to East around the world. This movement is caused by the rotation of the Earth. It can be pushed North or South, and can be stronger or weaker, depending on the other weather systems it comes into contact with. Some scientists have said that with climate change these jet streams are being pushed further towards the polar regions.
These highs and lows are often depicted on TV weather charts called ‘synoptic charts’. (We’ll look at these in more detail later in our series.)
So next time you tune in see if you can spot one, and predict which way it is heading!
In our next article we will look at what these low pressure systems are doing to the surface of the ocean.
Planning begins for our September 2009 trip to France
03 years ago
This week we have been considering our France surf tour. We’ve been planning logistics and where to surf.
There are plenty of spots to surf along the coast near Seignosse. Hossegor and Biarritz are well known, but there are plenty of other great places with less crowds and great waves.
Let us know what you want from your France surf holiday by sending us a comment.
