Spot Check: Europe’s Best Novelty Waves

"Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it. "

You might blame YouTube stars Ben Gravy, Jamie O’Brien, and Dylan Graves for igniting an interest in the world’s rare, weird, wacky, and warped waves. Mind you surfers have always loved a novelty wave; the rarity, the one-offness, the feeling you are riding something unusual. The watching crowds. They can come as rare sandbanks, man-made oddities or just plain bizarre locations. So in an upcoming series on novelty waves, I scanned the continent to check out Europe’s best novelty waves. 

The Garonne, Bordeaux

Sure the beaches of Lacanau have a certain je ne sais quoi. And down on the Cap Ferret isthmus, it’s possible to follow up a fun beachbreak surf with a glass of Chateau L'Oiseau Bordeaux Blanc at an Oyster Bar overlooking Arachon Bay. But what can’t you do, as you can in nearby Bordeaux, is ride a six-foot wave down the River Garonne for 10 minutes. 

The tidal bore occurs between June and September, when an extraordinarily high sea tide rushes up the river creating five to ten waves, moving at speeds of up to 20 mp/h. Now you won’t be alone if you decide to tackle it; a range of surfers, kayakers, paddle-boarders, longboarders, canoeists, and hit the phenomenon every time it breaks. It is effectively one long drop-in. A bit like Hossegor, really. 

‘Gasoline’ – Tagus River, Lisboa

Another river wave, but this time created not by the moon’s gravitational pull, but by a ferry wake. In Lisbon’s Tagus River, the huge boat that takes people from Berreiro to Lisbon creates a wave described as “the most high-performance ferry wave in the world.” Which says everything… and nothing. 

The size of the wave depends on the number of commuters on the ferry, whilst other variables include the size of the tides and the wind direction. If you can think of any other European waves that come with their own timetable let me know. 

The Port Of Amsterdam

The protective harbour locals have given this wave a fairly generic name, to keep this rare wave a “relative” secret. However, even given the recent popularity of a new surfing subset called wall ride surfing, you’d think that they needn’t bother. 

It’s a wave that only breaks every couple of years when huge Atlantic storms provide the gale force winds and giant swells needed to breach the harbour's significant defences. 

When that happens the locals go wild for their cold, grey, wind-and-wall-lashed novelty wave. Given the other option is sitting in a warm toasty Amsterdam sipping coffee and eating tasty, high-grade weed cookies, you have to hand it to them. 

Hot Pipes, Brighton UK

Hot Pipes is the favoured surf spot for the committed, hard-core gang of surfers from Brighton, on England’s Sussex Coast. Now, this isn’t palm trees and golden sands. The gas-fired Shoreham Power Station’s 100-metre-tall chimney stands sentinel over the wave, and the name comes from the pipe that takes the warmed wastewater from the plant to the cold, grey, English Channel. 

The pipe is encased in a flat, six-foot-wide concrete groyne which has various steel poles protruding from its top. Most of the punters flock to the small, wind swells that break on the sand and shingle on either side of the groyne. However, on the right tides, a slab left wedges off the flat, barely submerged concrete of the pipe itself. Intense two-second tubes are possible, as are impalement and concussion. 

The Baltic Sea

Barely even a Sea (formed a mere 10,000 years ago on a tectonic plate making it more shallow and enclosed than many other seas), waves shouldn’t really even exist here. Yet a dozen times a year, mainly around the Polish seaside town of Chałupy, surfers hit the Baltic. 

Now, these aren’t long sessions, most of the wind-generated swells don’t last more than two hours. However, they are met with commitment and stoke by a hard-core bunch of locals. Autumn and spring are the best bets, with winter often providing minus 20 Celsius temperature and minus 10 Celsius water. Baltic indeed.