We left the courtyard as the full moon descended over Casa do Correira and the church clock pealed six. Polished cobblestones reflected the moonlight back into the pre-dawn air as we sat on a bench, waited for our lift to the coast and ate the bread rolls we had bought at the airport the night before.

Headlights round the bend announcing the arrival of fellow Cornishman, Patch Wilson, who deftly navigates his large campervan into the narrow lanes of the Portuguese village of Raposeira. A niggling knee injury had laid rest to his big wave aspirations for the season back in his adopted home in West Ireland. Freed from his self-imposed expectations of what a winter surf season should be, Patch decided to swerve the Irish winter’s unremitting darkness. Instead, choosing to live the good life down in Portugal’s southern reaches amongst the pines of the Sudoeste Alentejano National Park for the past two months. His field reports glee- fully detailed an embarrassment of riches that proved irresistible to Al Mackinnon and myself who had just endured the UK’s wettest March in over 40 years.

Patch’s messages spoke of wildflow- ers carpeting the land, overhead wedges that pin-balled provocatively off geological oddities, and change from two euros for the iconic coffee and Pastel de Nata combo enjoyed post-surf in the sun. We didn’t need further encouragement. A haze of last-minute travel, airport delays and Brexit-shaped disruption culminated in our furtive pre-dawn surf mission, timed to avoid the coterie of surf vaga- bonds, grey nomads and assorted wellness jetsam that coalesce in this South Western extremity of Europe.

We head west along the N125 that traverses the south coast of the Algarve. In the distance, the town of Sagres is illuminated by the setting moon and the rhythmic flash of the …

” I’M SORRY TO ALL THE PEOPLE I’VE TAKEN WAVES FROM THE YEARS.”

Sat in the lotus position, Gerry Lopez opens his new film biopic with a mea culpa. Noted for his mellow persona and lifelong dedication to yoga, this uncharacteristic admission of selfishness sets the scene for Stacy Peralta’s latest film entitled ‘The Yin and Yang of GerryLopez’.

You don’t become top dog at Pipeline through meditation alone and this film busts open the broadly accepted dogma that Gerry Lopez is all Zen and no fire. Within minutes we see a skinny yet scowling Lopez, somewhere in his early 20s, ungainly scrapping with another surfer on the sand at his beloved Pipeline.

It’s hard to imagine that same young man, fraught with egotism and bristling with territorial fury, as I’m sat in front of the 73-year-old version. A softly spoken person who not only exudes calmness but has a rare ability to cast out serene energy in sunbeams to every-one in his presence.

“Umm, thanks but what is this?” he asked whilst looking at the bottle of cloudy, yellow liquid I had proudly removed from my back-pack and placed on the side table next to him.

“Apple Juice” I replied, quickly qualifying it with a hasty “Organic Apple juice. Pressed from my parents’ trees at home – I thought you might like it.”

Luckily, Lopez is fond of apple juice, or too polite to knock back my attempt to curry favour prior to my interview slot. From our rooftop vantage point, we have an expansive view over the Portuguese point break of Ribeira D’Ilhas situated in the heart of the Ericeira world surf reserve. We are here to celebrate the European premiere of he and Stacy Peralta’s new film. For Lopez that means a series of press engagements spent …

NO ONE HAS EVER ORDERED A NON-ALCOHOLIC BEER IN NORTHAMPTON BEFORE

I know because the landlord was at great pains to inform me of this shameful milestone in the town’s history. Considerately, he shielded the bottle from the gaze of other patrons before placing it in front of me. Perched on the pub’s sunny verandah, I looked out upon the rust freckled tin roofs and sandstone facades of the main drag. A three-carriage road-train carrying livestock flashed past in a blurred, unnatural rush of engine and animal noise.Eight hours of bitumen separated my adopted home of Margaret River from this dusty country town, situated about a third of the way up the expanse of Western Australia.

Established in 1864, Northampton is relatively old in terms of modern settlement of the state, it also is full of the familiar hallmarks of many an Australian town. A postoffice, a bakery, a hardware store and two pubs that face each other across the street in a silent tension.This inauspicious pitstop marked the midpoint of my journey to Gnaraloo: a 220,000-acre pastoral sheep station situated on the edge of the desert and overlooking the UNESCO World Heritage listed Ningaloo Reef.

The left-hand waves that break off Gnaraloo and nearby Red Bluff have become a quint-essential pilgrimage for Australian surfers since being discovered in the 1970s. Video of Mark Occhilupo slicing the lips off the turquoise waves of ‘Tombstones’ in the JackMcCoy classics ‘ Bunyip Dreaming’ and‘Green Iguana’ have become seared into the collective consciousness of surfers around the world. In a sport that continues to be defined by the search for the novel, this iconic spar-tan road trip has become a rite of passage for many. Unlike many lost paradises, the raw ingredients of harsh desert landscape, tropical reef surf, and superlative wilderness still remain …