Surf & Yoga Weeks in Spain, France and the Canary Islands

A typical week looks like this: you arrive on Saturday, get shown your room and the surf storage, meet the instructors, and eat dinner with the group. Sunday morning is your first surf session, usually a theory briefing on the sand followed by time in the white-water close to shore. Lessons run five or six days of the week, generally two sessions a day — one in the morning and one in the afternoon — with the middle of the day left free for lunch, a nap, or sitting on the beach. Yoga sessions (five per week in most camps) are usually in the late afternoon or early evening before dinner.

Lessons are taught by instructors with FES, DWV, ISA, BSA or FCS qualifications, and all of them hold lifeguard training. Boards and wetsuits are provided at every camp and stay available outside lesson times, so you can paddle out on your own once you're comfortable. Progression is real: by mid-week most beginners are standing consistently and paddling out past the break, and intermediate surfers are working on turning and reading the sets.

What separates these camps from a random surf school is the spread of locations and the setup at each. The Cantabria camp sits directly on the beach in northern Spain — you walk out of your room and you're on the sand, with cheap direct flights into Santander or Bilbao. The French camps at Le Pin Sec and Vieux-Boucau are on the Atlantic coast near Hossegor, with beach bars and a glamping option at Le Pin Sec where tents have proper beds. Fuerteventura is the year-round option, a surf house and apartments near the ocean, skatepark, restaurants and bars, open 365 days a year with reliable winter sun and swell.

Evenings are spent eating together, then either heading to the beach bar, skating, playing beach volleyball, or joining one of the organised trips. Camps also run their own surf contests during the week, which are taken about as seriously as you'd expect. The crowd tends to be a mix of solo travellers in their twenties and thirties, groups of friends, university groups, and families at the junior camp in summer.

Food is simple, healthy and plentiful — breakfast and dinner at Fuerteventura, full board at the Spanish and French summer camps. Expect things like porridge, fruit and eggs in the morning, big pasta and salad lunches, and grilled fish or chicken with vegetables in the evening. Vegetarian options are standard; other dietary needs are best flagged at booking.

What's included

- 7 nights accommodation (shared or private rooms, apartments at Fuerteventura) - Breakfast and dinner (Fuerteventura) or full board (Spain and France summer camps) - 5 or 6 days of surf lessons (22 lessons at the Junior Camp) - Surfboards and wetsuits for the duration of the stay - 5 yoga lessons per week - Beach transfers - Group activities: beach volleyball, skating, trips, surf contests - Trained, licensed instructors with lifeguard training

What's not included

- Flights to and from the destination - Travel insurance - Airport transfers (arranged separately unless stated) - Lunches outside the full-board camps - Personal expenses and nights out - Optional extras such as surf photography packages - Surf vans and apartments in Tenerife (booked separately)