Friday night on Croyde’s pretty high street and the clutch of tables outside the Thatch pub are crammed with a diverse mix of punters. There are a couple of families with bored-looking teenagers, huddles of surfer dudes and a pair of unmistakable stag groups — unmistakable because at least half of them are in spandex-and-sequinned drag. It’s surprisingly lively for such a small place, with a band playing inside and the bar area bursting with drinkers. But by 11.30pm the taxis have arrived to take the stag parties back to nearby Braunton and the village is settling down to sleep. Croyde may know how to party, but (thankfully) it’s hardly Newquay.
Anyone who loves surfing, body-boarding or just messing about in the water will love Croyde. It’s Britain’s best surfing beach, although a combination of messy rips and strong tides means the waves aren’t to be messed with. Backed by rippling dunes and a wide swathe of sand, it’s also catnip for families; in the summer holidays the village population swells from 1,200 to 10,000. Queues form for hot pasties from Brook Stores, or to browse the racks of rash vests in Ralph’s (tiny) Surf Shop, and trying to catch a decent wave inevitably means getting tangled up with half a dozen other boarders with the same idea.
The time to visit Croyde is before — or after — high season. Autumn is perfect, when the sea is warm and the waves reliable. You can rent a house right in the heart of the village, as my boyfriend and I did — ours was barely three minutes’ walk from the Thatch.
There are other reasons to come to Croyde — the South West Coast Path runs right across the beach, and we saw plenty of booted-and-fleeced walkers stomping across the sands. But, really, it’s all about the waves: hireable surfboards are propped up outside every shop and café, surf-school flags billow in the breeze. To our dismay, on Saturday morning the forecast was flat — pancake flat. Once, this would have meant disconsolate lazing on the sands with a book, but thanks to the increasingly popular stand-up paddleboarding, there is now something to do on wave-free days.
A phone call to Croyde Surf Academy (croydesurfacademy.com) and we had a two-hour lesson booked on the neighbouring beach, Putsborough at midday. If Croyde is the beach for pro surfers, Putsborough is for happy amateurs; the waves are gentler, rolling across the three-mile-long sands that stretch to Woolacombe. What takes place over the following two hours is not dignified, but it is fun; I topple repeatedly into the sea from the hugely long paddleboard until finally I find my balance and start to glide gently across the water.
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By the time we finish, the sea has livened up a little and there’s talk of a swell building. It’s a beautiful evening so we head north to Barricane Beach, where the café serves up fantastic Sri Lankan curries. We pick up a bottle of prosecco on the way, and although the beach is busy when we arrive, it’s worth it; we take our plates of sambol, poppadoms, curry and rice down on to the sands and eat as the sun starts to sink on the horizon.
It’s still light when we get back, and we decide to walk off dinner with a stroll out to Baggy Point, the National Trust-owned headland that separates Croyde from Putsborough. As we walk, I look out to sea, where a handful of surfers are sitting on their boards, waiting for their waves. “They’re optimistic,” I say, looking at the almost nonexistent swell, but then it occurs to me that possibly they’re not out there to surf, but just to soak up the sunshine and the sense of being out on the ocean, away from it all.
Next morning, we wake stiff from the paddle-boarding and instead of clambering straight into wetsuits, we walk the mile or so to Georgeham village for an early lunch before an afternoon in the sea. The Rock Inn ticks all the rural gastropub boxes — scrubbed tables, locally sourced ingredients, blazing flower-boxes — and we feast on rosemary and garlic lamb and leek and parmesan crumble and wonder if we’ll actually be able to fit into our wetsuits. By the time we leave, just after 1pm, the place is heaving. Coming early was a good decision.
The afternoon passes as all afternoons should in Croyde: hurtling into the beach on pleasingly regular waves, getting saltier and sandier and increasingly tired. The beauty of booking a three-night break meant we could stay on the sands for as long as we wanted, and by early evening we were hungry again and went in search of chips from the beach café. The beach was almost empty apart from a couple of solitary dog walkers and a handful of couples making the most of the romantic sunset. Cold beer, hot chips and a sunkissed, empty beach: the perfect end to a perfect weekend.
Annabelle Thorpe was a guest of Homeaway.
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Where to stay
Montague Farmhouse is in the heart of the village, and sleeps up to ten in five bedrooms; three-night breaks cost from £402 through Homeaway (homeaway.com, prop ref OC163)
Where to eat
The Rock Inn (01271 890322, therockinn.biz) at Georgeham serves everything from doorstep fish-finger sandwiches for lunch to local seafood for dinner. Reservations are advisable.