ERICEIRA
Believe it or not, there ended up being eight of us traveling. It was back in the day when no one had long-term girlfriends or wives and could take a holiday with a few days’ notice. We flew from Dublin to Lisbon and hired two cars, packed all our boards on top, squashed our gear in the back and drove straight to our first destination: Ericeira. There were no booking websites back then, so we ended up in an overpriced hotel in the hills that looked good when we booked it back in Dublin. We didn’t really care as we had cars and all we wanted to do was surf.
A colorful Ericeira street. Photo: Nicky Kelly
We all arrived with our thick wetsuits and straight away knew they were of no use as it was 30 degrees Celsius (85F) after all. A trip to the local surf shop would help us out we thought, but no, they had no short wetsuits. The Portuguese are so used to the heat that they feel the cold, and even in the heat of the summer, they wear full wetsuits. Yes, the water is only 22C (72F), but with temperatures running about 30 degrees outside, a wetsuit for us was definitely not an option. Paddling around in the water without any suit on was an incredible feeling for us, and none of us had experienced it before. Just being able to get out of the car, sit on the beach and then run into the water with a pair of shorts on was so alien to us. Probably hard to grasp, but we were used to getting changed in concrete car parks in the wind and rain.
Ribeira d’Ilhas. Photo: Nicky Kelly
We spent four days in Ericeira surfing the beach breaks of Foz do Lizandro, Sao Juliao, Matadouro and, best of all, Ribeira d’Ilhas–an epic right pointbreak which resembles J-Bay. This was paradise for me, a regular footer, as the breaks I surf back home in Ireland tend to be more lefts than rights.
PENICHE
Over the next week, we followed the coastline up north surfing in Santa Cruz and on up to the world-famous Supertubos. Summer is a perfect time to surf it for those of us who are not quite professional yet! You still get four to six-foot waves, not the 8-12 foot autumn monster barrels you see at the Rip Curl Pro event every October. Our favorite spot in the area became Ferrel, 10km from Peniche, a big stretch of hidden beach, down a few dusty roads surrounded by bamboo fields. It was a similar setting in a way to the old footage of early surfers in 1950s California. Not many others around and just countryside with no sign of any human development.
Supertubos. Photo: Nicky Kelly
We got lost a few times but always pointed the car in the direction of the ocean until we saw the gap in the road and the beach appearing below in all its glory. We found our paradise with hardly anyone else out. We knew how Leonardo DiCaprio felt when he discovered the beach in Thailand. We spent eight hours a day here for almost a week.
Each night we would go back to Peniche’s old town and eat delicious grilled fish or burgers and watch soccer. The Portuguese are soccer mad and in every little square they would have a big screen up with the whole neighborhood out watching. Every time Portugal played, the towns went crazy. Everyone was out in the streets jumping up and down, cars honking their horns, people shouting and screaming. And we just joined in as if we were locals. There was no intimidation, no uneasiness. They say Irish people are friendly, but the Portuguese must top us.
