I took a trip to the Ericeira World Surf Reserve (I have nightmares about spelling the name!) for some autumn sun and to surf / photograph some amazing waves. I packed light, only two cameras, a waterproof housing and a wetsuit, my family took up the rest of the bag space inconsiderately wanting to carry things like clothes, shoes and such!
We stayed at You and the Sea Ericeira looking out over Praia do Sul and woke up to hear crashing waves and see lines marching in from the horizon every day. In a non-surf moment we visited a great cafe / restaurant called Green is Good in the old town area of Ericeira where we all had amazing smoothies and sweet potato brownies. I know it sounds a bit ‘hipster’ but they were really great and had no processed sugar in them, I’ve tried my best to avoid it for the past year or so. We also spent a lot of time in the great beach cafe on Praia de Ribeira d’Ilhas which was a brilliant spot to fuel up and watch the waves with a beer after surfing.
As Ericeira has received world surf reserve status (I’m not sure who bestows this title, sound impressive though) it has embraced surf tourism and the surf industry is begining to spread in the area, from grass roots surf schools and hire to the awesome purpose built 58 Surf on the road down to Praia de Ribeira d’Ilhas. 58 Surf is a surf shop, shaping room, cafe, bar and general hangout, I’ve never seen so many surfboards before in my life. They had all of the big names plus some local shapers, I could have stayed in their for hours, and did in fact looking at the hundreds of racked surfboards on display.
Getting down to the beach the surf was as amazing, as billed, in the head high to double overhead range all week allowing me to both go surfing and get absolutely pummelled in the shore break with my waterproof housing. I also managed a bit of street photography, which while not usually my thing was fun using my little g800, the flip up screen and silent shutter allowing me to take shots without being too obvious.
It was the surf photography I was most interested in though using both a wide-angle prime and small kit lens with my waterproof housing to get in amongst the shore breaks on Praia de Ribeira d’Ilhas and Praia Foz do Lizandro. Both of these beaches and in fact all of the others in the area seemed to drop fairly sharply off into the ocean meaning that the water got deep very close to shore, this made them perfect for shore break photography. I got bounced off the sand quite a few times, the power of the waves was huge and they forced the coarse Ericeiran sand into everything. So I had to be extra careful when rinsing off the waterproof housing and seemed to leave a trail of sand everywhere I went.
I was pleased with the results and will be posting some of the better images and adding a few for sale in my gallery over the next week or so, hopefully I will have stopped finding sand in everything by then and just maybe the sun will come out back here in Pembrokeshire (it looks like a flat black and white photograph out of the window today).
