Bed and board

Published 03rd Aug 2007

Caroline McGhie looks at stylish pads for a new generation of surfers

We live 100 feet from the sea," says Edward Short. "From here we can watch the surfers paddling out to get behind where the waves break." Edward moved to a dilapidated house on the edge of Croyde Bay in North Devon with his wife Hazel and daughters Nicole and Lauren just three years ago. They are not alone. A whole new generation of property buyers, drawn by the surf and the outdoor life, is gravitating towards some of the coast's prettiest bays where the waves ride highest. Some in their 20s are moving from camper vans to seaside flats. Others are city dudes who come for the weekends and just want a bed for the night plus a locker to stash the board and wetsuit. Whole families, too, are taking to life on the edge; skiers turn to surfing in the summer months, and age is no barrier. There are silver surfers, too.

The Short girls are now six and seven years old, and belong to The Nippers' lifesaving club which meets twice a week to learn surfing and sea wisdom. The house has been restored to resemble something you might find in the Caribbean - bleached floors, slate steps, sun terraces and huge windows framing the great drama of the Atlantic. They left behind London, and Edward left the music business just as it was being adversely affected by the iPod. "My passion has always been to live by the sea," he says. "The winter storms are spectacular and we can sit in the conservatory and just watch it bashing in."

Summer, however, is when Croyde comes alive, with Edward's local wetsuit supplier selling 2,000 suits in the high season. "This is such an amazing place to bring up kids. A lot of others with a surfing attitude have moved out too, so there is a kind of micro area of like-minded people who are into outdoors and sunsets. It is great. We get much more out of the world living this way."

Edward is now selling Down End House, with its five bedrooms, wet room, games room, two-bedroom lodge, four-bedroom stables (which is a holiday let), at £2•5 million through Knight Frank. But this is only to create another spectacular house by the sea.

Like gulls following a fishing boat, surfers have flocked to North Devon, and particularly to Croyde, which sits between Saunton Sands and Woolacombe Bay. The narrow bay guarantees huge waves, and developers have been quick to cotton on to demand. At Woolacombe - which is not yet quite Croyde but is one up from Ilfracombe - new apartments are being sold by Strutt & Parker at £420,000 to £495,000, right on the ocean.

With more to spend, you could get the seaside bungalow of your dreams, a sort of palatial beach hut. Ocean Pines overlooks the whole sweep of the Blue Flag beach from Morte Point to Baggy Point. It has two bedrooms, a gardencum- guest room in the landscaped terraced gardens, and a terrace on which you can drink champagne and watch the sun set over the western horizon. Knight Frank is asking £850,000.

"My children have grown up on surfboards," says Pam Stafford, who has been coming to a holiday house called Windcutter at Lee since she was a girl. She is now in her 60s, her two boys are grown up, and the grandchildren are already keen surfers. "It has been such a huge part of our lives," she says. "I would take all the children and their friends down to the beach and they would all roar down to the sea. I would sit with the hot soup to greet them when they came out." This summer one of her sons has taken time out from his job as a chef at Nobu to ride the Woolacombe surf.

But now, she is selling the weatherboarded house with all its memories for £850,000 through Jackson-Stops & Staff. It has five bedrooms, a summerhouse, garden studio and six acres of landscaped grounds sitting on the headland close to Ilfracombe, where Damien Hirst has turned from artist to restaurateur, serving fusion food at Number 11 The Quay.
It should be no surprise that the surfing phenomenon is influencing the property market. The National Maritime Museum in Cornwall in 2005 estimated that the sport, which started the last century in knitted woollen costumes and ended it as a major influence in the fashion industry, had spawned a £200 million business, half of which is generated in the South West.

For most beach boys and girls chasing the blond, bronzed, blueeyed dream, Newquay is the first choice, where the Atlantic low pressure systems push vast swells towards the coast and 11 glorious beaches lie tip-to-tip. Fistral Beach has the National Surfing Centre and annual Rip Curl pro competitions. This is where the brave show off their "walling" and "tunnelling". The legendary big wave spot called "the Cribbar", which breaks at 20ft, is something that few people have ever attempted. And the Watergate Hotel on Watergate Bay has turned itself into the ultimate in beach chic with Jamie Oliver's new restaurant Fifteen as bait.

Buying off-plan has become the norm in Newquay, a place which half a century ago was just a fishing village. In 2005, the first "surf pods" - bespoke micro units with a bed which comes out of the wall and space to stash the board for the weekend surfer - were launched by Knight Frank at a development called Lusty Glaze. They were priced at just under £100,000 and sold overnight. Now surf pods are being created by the dozen as the town aims to become the surf capital of the UK. "We have urban surfers, rural surfers, silver surfers, people who just want a pad near the beach, buying them up," says Simon Scott- Nelson of Strutt & Parker, who has just sold 14 apartments in a development called 270 North, priced at £200,000 to £530,000.

Now he has another 25 at Ocean Gate on Fistral Beach, of which eight are left, at £195,000 to £750,000. "It has a bistro, a roof terrace with two Jacuzzis, sun loungers, wet rooms, rooms for stashing the surfboards, shower rooms to get the sand off you as soon as you get in the building, and iPod docking stations. All you need really.

"Developers are buying up the old hotels and catering for what is a complete shift in lifestyle. The young who used to camp here are now in their 30s, earning some money and want to buy an investment which mixes with a bit of holiday and letting potential. The local authorities often insist that they can't be used as second homes and impose a holiday-use restriction, which means that people can holiday in them and let them so that it is good for the economy. They don't want these places to go dark in winter."

So it is in the old hotels of Newquay that the new surf pods are being minted. Simon has 67 coming on stream in Fistral 1, priced at £195,000 to £340,000. "It will be linked to a hotel, casino and boutiques, and sold on a guest-invest basis, which means you buy and it is rented out for you as an extra hotel bedroom when you aren't using it." More surf pods are coming on at The Quay, where prices aren't fixed yet, and more in the heart of Newquay, though these are still on the drawing board.

Already people are casting around for other locations back from the beachfront which may be cheaper. For the all-round sporty there is The Woodlands, where the apartments have their own jetty, squash courts and an open-air heated swimming pool and tennis court overlooking the Gannel estuary. Simon is selling these offplan too, at £385,000 to just over £1 million. "This is an area which is coming up because prices on Fistral beach are now so high," he says.

Away from the South West, the glamour of surf diminishes. But on the north east coast at Embleton Bay, Alnmouth and Tynemouth Longsands, there is enough wave power to keep many surfers happy, though it hasn't yet created its own property market. This may be because surfers have to tackle the extreme cold of the North Sea, but even so their numbers have increased tenfold in the past decade.

Cottages around here are like gold dust, and those near the sea can carry a premium of about £40,000, pushing the price of something quite small up to £500,000. "The waves are good, five to six feet on big days, so you can do up to 60 metres on a wave, but it doesn't have the kudos of North Cornwall or Devon," says Tom Parish, surfer and negotiator with Strutt & Parker. "Surfers round here like to buy vans and sleep in the back. It is a lifestyle thing."

For the wealthier silver surfer, they are selling The Manor House, with four bedrooms and gardens stretching straight on to the beach at Cresswell at the edge of Druridge Bay, for £800,000; and two five-bedroom barn conversions at Bamburgh, where the great castle juts out to sea, at £1•1 million and £1•3 million. Both are close enough to catch the big hitters at Tynemouth on days when the sea roughs up. It may only be a matter of time before the pods arrive.

Source: ' Times Online '

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