Learning How to Surf in Mimizan Plage, France

An old dream of my sister and I was that we’d go surfing one day. So we finally did it and travelled to Mimizan Plage in France to get surfing lessons there. I am completely addicted to surfing now and will definitely go surfing again this summer.

As we’ve never surfed before, we started off with long boarding lessons. Surfing with long boards is supposed to be easier because it takes you only a couple of hours to be able to stand up on a board. I heard about people who took weeks to stand on a short board, so, considering the fact that we were staying in Mimizan for only a week, a long board was a pretty good idea, I guess.

The surf school we went to was called Silver Surf, I can’t but recommend the school; the teachers are competent, the atmosphere is really family-like and all of the staff was super friendly (we didn’t take any lessons anymore on our last day, but were just renting one surfboard and a wetsuit, which was completely fine with them; they even gave us advice on the weather conditions that very day, and 10% off the price because we took lessons at their surf school before). There are some other surf schools in Mimizan as well, I guess they are all pretty good actually.

Some people told me they went to Biarritz (a city quite close to Mimizan) to surf there and didn’t like it at all because there were so many unfriendly surfers out there who apparently feel super cool because they’re surfers. I guarantee you that this can’t happen when you choose Mimizan for your first surfing lessons; everybody was just really friendly and helpful. And the best bit: they can all speak English and there were even surfing lessons which were held in English. :)

After three group surfing lessons, we knew how to stand on a long board and sometimes even managed to do some easy tricks. If there is one disadvantage to be mentioned about Mimizan Plage, it’s probably that the water is freezing cold (so you have to wear a wetsuit even during the summer) and that you’re basically not able to just swim in the sea because the waves are quite high. Plus, there are some strong currents from time to time which don’t make surfing that easy. However, I enjoyed taking surfing lessons there enormously, the prices are cheaper than in a big city like Biarritz (that affects both lessons and accommodation) and you can still do lots of excursions, you can visit Biarritz, for example, or the Dune de Pyla, the biggest moving sand dune in Europe.

If you’ve ever thought about taking surfing lessons, Mimizan Plage is definitely a good place to go to.

written by erdnusskeks on 2011-02-19 #places #surfing #longboard #location #beach #france #lessons #personal-story #mimizan