France in April?

20W-50 and blood

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Feb 4, 2004
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Have a rare opportunity to go on the cheap. Will have a week once I land. worth it as far as waves go? Looking to post up and not do a ton of driving or hitching around.
 
Aug 11, 2015
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I'm French and although I haven't surf that much there in Springtime, I can tell you that you could score (25% chance), get skunked (25% chances) or only get average conditions that don't justify a surf trip (50% chances). So yes, it's a tricky one. If you do go, it may be a good idea to decide where to end up at the last minute, given the forecast. Full weeks of blown out conditions are common in the South West and that portion of the Coast is straight so if the wind is wrong you're done. North of the Gironde estuary all the way to Brittany the coast does offer more option that can handle different winds or stormy conditions. But that's not exactly ideal if you don't want to drive around that much... You could even check the Med, sometimes in a given week in April the Med may (very rarely) have better conditions than the Atlantic, but the swell only lasts 24 to 48 hours at max... Again, not ideal if you don't want to be "on the search". France is like that, mostly rubbish conditions that requires you to move a lot and a lot of local knowledge. Conditions on a given spot and day will usually only be good for a couple of hours and "right time right place" is critical. It does make it nice when you eventually score, but it's very frustrating.

If you head for South West, again you could be lucky, but be aware that chances are you may only get a couple of decent sessions and 5 days of absolute junk. Good thing is there's a lot of other things to see and more importantly eat.

Also, water will be cold, this is right after winter. 5/4 + booties early April. maybe 4/3 + booties end of April.

Hope this helps,


Pierre