glissers.com/blog

I met a guy in Morocco once who told me about a “Swedish surf brand”, and he claimed that the boards were awesome. I was sceptical, but such a thing actually exists - Nordsurf is a Swedish producer of surf boards, with boards adapted to Swedish conditions.

I’m embarresed to say that even though I did a lot of windsurfing when I grew up, I never even tried wavesurfing in Sweden, and I still haven’t. I’ll change that this coming Christmas, unless there is too much ice. Here’s a good movie about the Swedish way of wavehunting.

Nordsurf.com is also a community for the dedicated tribe of Swedish surfers. They arrange surf camps, parties, competitions, and have a lively web forum (only in Swedish). And Adam at Nordsurf wrote a nice article about glissers - thanks

I’ve got Thursday and Friday off this week. Should I leave the smog and go surfing…?

YES!

But more difficult is to figure out where to go… the forecast for Saunton is not looking great - too much wind - Saunton at MSW

Maybe this is the perfect opportunity to venture down to the south of Portugal, fly into Faro with Ryanair and spend a few days traveling around. Or maybe go to Wales for a few days. Or maybe hop over to Biarritz. Oh, these wonderful choices

I spent Thursday and Friday in Saunton, North Devon. I arrived with bus from London late on Wednesday evening, tired and hungry. Woke up early on Thursday to maximize my exposure to the waves, but almosted started to cry when I saw the weather - rainy, windy, no waves.

I went out anyway - 2 h in the morning, 2 h in the afternoon. Happy just to get wet and catch some small messy waves.

And then, when the evening came, the wind dropped, the tide came back in, and all of a sudden it was paradise. Saunton is amazing for longboarding, absolutely amazing, and I had the best time ever (well not ever, but it was GOOD). Friday morning was even better, so when I went back to London (7 hour in a bus…) I had a big fat smile on my face.

I wrote a review of the place I stayed: Saunton Sands Hotel.

Here’s a pic from the road just above the hotel:

The idea behind www.glissers.com was born in Dakar, Senegal, while on a week-long surfing holiday at Ngor Surf Camp. Originally, we wanted to create a surf travel operator for Scandinavian surfers. But after spending a few hours googling, it was clear that there are already good alternatives for the Scandies, so we decided to try something else.

One of my favorite web sites is www.yelp.com, which lists user reviews of restaurants and bars etc in San Francisco. I love reading other peoples honest opinion about things they care about, and I’m pretty sure surfers would appreciate the same kind of information - reviews and tips on where to stay while on a surfing trip.

Let’s see if the idea was good or bad - we’ve just started a long journey