How to choose a surf spot when you're a beginner

A spot's type tells you one thing above all: what the wave breaks over. When you're starting out, that's the criterion that matters, because you will fall. A lot.

• Beach break: the wave breaks over sandbanks. The peaks shift and the wave is less consistent — but the bottom forgives. It's beginner territory, and it's what you find along most of the French Atlantic coast.
• Reef break: the bottom is rock or coral. The wave breaks in the same place every time, beautifully… with very little water underneath. Cuts, twisted ankles, snapped boards — save it for later.
• Point break: swell wraps around a headland and peels a long way in one direction. Gorgeous waves, usually a rock or cobblestone bottom, and above all a packed line-up where priority is taken seriously.

A gently sloping beach break where the wave rolls towards the shore beats the most famous spot in the region, every time.

The second filter has nothing to do with the wave: it's how the beach is organised.

On French beaches the supervised swimming zone sits between two blue flags, with a green (supervised, no particular danger), yellow-orange (dangerous but supervised) or red (swimming forbidden) flag for sea conditions; surfing inside that zone is normally banned, so look for the marked surf zone beside it. In the UK and Ireland, red-and-yellow flags mark the lifeguarded swimming area and black-and-white chequered flags mark the zone for boards. Learning within sight of a lifeguard station is the single best safety habit there is.

Surf schools didn't set up where they did by accident: they pick a mellow section, a clean bottom, a manageable current. Surf next to them — never through the middle of a lesson.

Crowd size is safety information as much as comfort. Four rules are enough to be welcome:

• Priority goes to the surfer closest to where the wave starts to break. Don't take off in front of them.
• Paddle out around the peak, not straight through it.
• Hold on to your board. Never ditch it with someone behind you.
• Apologise when you get it wrong. It works everywhere.

This is what confuses beginners most: “yesterday was magic, today it's a mess”, at the very same beach.

• Tide. On many beach breaks the wave is soft and fat at high tide and fast and hollow at low — or the other way round. Some spots only work for two or three hours a day.
• Swell power. For the same wave height, a swell generated far out at sea, with a long gap between waves, arrives with far more punch than chop raised by the local wind.
• Swell direction. A bay facing due west receives almost nothing from a southerly swell, while a spot two kilometres up the coast works fine.
• Wind. Offshore wind, blowing from the land, grooms the surface; onshore wind chops it up. On Atlantic coasts in summer a thermal sea breeze often builds in the afternoon — hence the dawn-patrol ritual.
• Sandbanks move from one winter to the next: last year's magic bank can be ordinary this year.

Reading all of that at a glance is exactly what Yosurf's level-based score does for you: the same day can be an 80 for an experienced surfer and a 25 for a beginner, because it simply isn't the same wave for the two of you.

• Is the bottom sand, with no rocks where the waves break?
• Is a lifeguard station open, or are there at least other surfers in the water?
• Do the waves roll towards the beach, or slam straight onto the sand? Shore break injures more people than big days out the back.
• Is it bigger than chest high? Then come back tomorrow. No drama — that's how you last.
• Where are the currents? A patch of water that looks calmer and darker, where waves aren't breaking, is usually a rip heading out to sea, not a quiet corner. On the Gironde and Landes coasts these are the baïnes: pools between sandbanks that drain seaward on the falling tide and catch out people who were standing in waist-deep water. If you're caught: don't paddle against it, keep hold of your board, let it carry you, exit sideways, raise an arm.
• How many surfers on the peak? Take the quieter peak, even if the wave is worse.
• Is there a surf school or a shop on the beach? Two minutes with an instructor beats every forum online.

Last habit: tell someone where you're going, and don't paddle out alone in your first sessions.