For years, surfing has been my escape from work. It’s the place where email notifications and teams messages can’t find me, and over the years I have been fortunate enough to travel to places such as South America, Indonesia, New Zealand, Fiji, Portugal, Morocco, and the Canary Islands in search of good waves and empty lineups.

Considering I spend most of my timing writing grants and tender applications, I suppose it’s only natural that I’ve found a small passion in amateur surf journalism.

Running your own business has its difficult moments, but a clear upshot has been the opportunity to share videos and stories from these trips in a centralised location.

“The Canary Islands are just off Morocco dude…”

A message sent into the oblivion of the group chat, which slowly morphed into a cornerstone of our itinerary.

Google Maps was consulted, as were various surf blogs and reddit posts which gave conflicted reports of surf quality during the North Atlantic winter. Would it be too big? Too windy?? About 100km off the coast of Africa and confusingly under Spanish jurisdiction, the islands are highly exposed to the trade winds and larger N/NW winter swells.

The general consensus was that we would probably encounter some of the heaviest surf localism on the planet.

For that reason - and a promise made while packing away my tripod - I will not zoom any further into the islands, and instead let the video tell the full story.