Cornwall

Newquay's living room: the town beach under the famous island house with its private suspension bridge. Tucked deep in the bay, it takes the sting out of whatever the Atlantic sends, which makes it the learning wave and the storm refuge in one. When Fistral is a mess of ten foot chop, Towan and its neighbours peel off small and organised. The trade-off is space: at high tide the beach nearly disappears.

Two miles of sand under high cliffs, five minutes north of Newquay and a world away from its bustle. At low tide the beach is so vast that fifty surfers feel like five: pick a bank, walk to it, have it almost to yourself. It swallows more swell than the town beaches and offers peaks for every level, but it is wide open to the wind, so mornings and offshore days are when it earns its reputation.

Three miles of beach running north into the Penhale dunes, with a bar on the sand and a town that lives at surf pace. The peaks are consistent rather than brilliant, which is exactly what progressing surfers need, and there is always somewhere to escape the main crowd if you are willing to walk. Respect the rip beside Chapel Rock: it is the beach's one honest trap, and the lifeguards will point you away from it.

The home ground of British surfing and still its best all-round beach break. Facing squarely into the swell window behind Towan Head, Fistral holds shape from waist-high summer peelers to solid overhead autumn walls, with the contest bank at the south end and quieter Little Fistral appearing at low tide. Yes it is crowded, and yes the standard is high: this is where the country's best grew up. It earns the fame.

The gentle giant of St Ives Bay. The bay bends and softens incoming swell, so Gwithian stays surfable when the open beaches are maxed out, offering long, sloping walls that longboarders and improving surfers treat as home. Godrevy lighthouse watches from the north end and grey seals haul out below the headland. Wind is the deal-breaker here: it needs an easterly or nothing.

The first beach in England to feel every Atlantic swell. Tucked under the granite of Land's End, Sennen catches waves when the entire north coast is asleep, which makes the hour's drive from Newquay the county's oldest flat-day cure. White sand, water that pretends to be the Caribbean until you touch it, and a bowl of a bay with peaks from mellow to punchy. Walk north toward Gwynver and it picks up even more.

A slot of a cove below the ruined tin mine engine houses of the St Agnes cliffs, and the north coast's low-tide specialist. When the tide drains, a wide beach appears and throws up fast, wedging peaks that break harder and shallower than they look from the car park. The St Agnes crew surf it well and often; visitors should watch a few sets first. At high tide there is no beach at all, so read the times before you drive.

Cornwall's serious wave. Off the harbour mouth of a granite fishing village, a shallow reef ledge folds solid southwest swell into a thick, spitting right that has ended more boards than any wave in the county. It needs size to break at all and a north wind to be clean, so it sleeps through most of the year and wakes in autumn and winter, when the county's best surfers appear and the pier fills with people watching them. Not a wave to learn on: a wave to earn.