After my vow a few days ago to give up surfing in Europe due to crowds, infrequency of decent surf and the effort to get anywhere, I'm remembering the brief days surfing in Galicia with some affection.

The Galician coast is insanely gorgeous, and perfect for surfing because there's absolutely going to be a place where it's offshore on any given day, due to the shape of the coastline - lots of fingers of headlands and indented beaches. Imagine a heap of hands fingering out into the Atlantic Ocean and that's the shape of the coast.

It's also relatively uncrowded compared to Portugal and the Basque coast as it's harder to get to - and most people stay where it's warm or head over to Morocco to surf. It's further away from big cities like the Algarve or the south coast of France or the Atlantic coast of Spain before it hits Galicia. A lot of people are saying it'll be the next Portugal and already surf schools are springing up everywhere.

The coast reminded me a lot of home - a lot of rural farming land backing onto forests and rough roads leading down to wild beaches. It's way more wild than you'll find elsewhere in Europe. The spot we ended up surfing had a handful of young Europeans in vans but no where near what it was like in Portugal. Sure, the day we were there it was pretty small, but I've seen people surfing smaller. In the pictures above, you won't spot large waves because - well, there wasn't much swell - and I had already got out of the water. By the way, it was freaking freezing. I went out in my 3x2 but should have put my thicker suit on. I surfed a tiny right hander on my longboard for an hour over a couple of days and it was fun. This beach is known to be a big of a longboarders wave and I was told it was better a couple of weeks ago - but it had been a bad summer for waves.

Here's an example of the offshore/onshore thing in Galicia. The above beach is lovely and clean, but only up the road, this gorgeous wild beach is a mess. I would have loved to have surfed it when it was good, but it wasn't to be.

I loved my time surfing Galicia, however short it was. It was great talking to young surfers, particularly the woman. I spent a few hours talking to a young German woman in a van who was having a life dilemma about going back to university or going surfing in Morocco. Being on the road and going from surf break to surf break was a life of freedom for her and had opened her eyes to what life could be, which was a stark contrast to the 9 to 5 grind. She reminded me a lot of me when I was 21. I felt old but these young surfers were so open to people they loved hearing about our Land Rover travellers and the fact we were over 50 but choosing adventure over routine.

Whilst this isn't my photo (unfortunately - I would have loved to have catched waves like this!), it's a nice example of what we could have been lucky enough to get in Galicia. Honestly, if you're a Euro surfer and planning a surf trip, you can't go past this wild stretch of coast.