Today there are over 2.5 million surfers across Europe. You can ride Spanish point breaks as perfect and machine-like as Malibu in California, you can charge thundering Scottish reefs as cylindrical and blue as those of the legendary Pipeline on Hawaii's North Shore, or risk life and limb on the 50ft monsters that rear up out of the depths off Ireland's Atlantic fringe.

 

Independent, 25 july 2008.