Wifeless, homeless, jobless, Jonathan Bennett set out in an old camper van on a mission to surf around Britain. Here he shares his experiences of Seaton Carew, Saltburn and fellow surfers on the North-East coast

BY the time I reached Hartlepool, I had covered less than half the country and only a third of the waves. I still had a long way to go. Autumn was easing towards winter and the water was starting to get cold. I knew it was going to get a lot colder, but for the moment I could still manage with just a wetsuit and boots. I wanted to avoid gloves and hood as long as possible, so I had something in reserve for when it got seriously cold.

My plan was to surf my way around Britain, living in an old VW van and moving from beach to beach, more or less in order. If the waves were terrible, I had to wait for them to improve. If they were great, I would stay for a few days, and make the most of them. Other than that, it was surf and run, more or less. Or surf and trundle. That was all my ancient T25 could manage.

I had started at the bottom of the Hebrides in early September and worked my way round clockwise, up the Hebrides, along the north coast of Scotland and round into the North Sea. I had managed to catch the raging beast of Thurso, Britain’s most iconic reef break, when it had been relatively tame, and stumbled across huge waves at Tynemouth. But after the magnificent wilds of Scotland, England was generally proving to be somewhat calmer.

Hartlepool and Seaton Carew weren’t the most beautiful beaches on my circuit of Britain, but I enjoyed their post-industrial charm, and in early November, apart from a couple of dog-walkers and a fluttering of redshanks, I felt privileged to have them to myself. The waves weren’t perfect, but they were certainly adequate, and I made the most of a couple of fun sessions in shoulder-high surf, overshadowed by the pier at Hartlepool, and the ominous steelworks looming to the south of Seaton Carew.

At the start of the trip, I had decided to forgo campsites so I could sleep close to the sea. But it wasn’t easy finding somewhere discreet to camp above either beach, so after a couple of days, once I had fulfilled my self-imposed surfing obligations, I continued south. I made a brief detour to check out the Gare, just inside the mouth of the Tees. It’s another iconic – if somewhat polluted – wave, but one that breaks only occasionally, when conditions are right. They weren’t right, so I trundled on towards Saltburn.

After the splendid isolation of Northumberland and the deserted beaches around Hartlepool, arriving in Saltburn on a Saturday morning was a shock – but a pleasant one. It felt like a proper surf town, with surfers and surfboards everywhere you looked. I parked the van and strolled down to the surf shack on the sea front. The waves were small and the tide was dropping, so I decided to wait and see if it would pick up in the afternoon.

Seventeen days later, I was still waiting. Surf in the North-East is good, but like anywhere, when it’s flat, it’s flat. And this was flat. Not so much as a ripple for the whole seventeen days. I know, because I stared at it for the entire time, willing something to happen. But nothing did.

At least nothing happened on the water. On land, it was a different story. I was kicked out of one of Saltburn’s genteel tea houses, I assume because by then I looked like a vagrant. And I was propositioned one night by a dogger in one of the car parks between Redcar and Markse – though I still looked pretty much like a vagrant. Perhaps it’s a look some people appreciate.

Eventually I decided to move on and camped for a while just short of Whitby. Here, finally, the flat spell ended, on one of Yorkshire’s fantastic left-hand reefs, a sinuous, swooping pulse of a wave that gave me the ride of my life and ended my wave-drought with a bang.

Too much of a bang, perhaps. With the waves came the weather, and now the sea wasn’t too flat, it was too rough, with howling on-shore gales, no good for surfing. I went in anyway, surfing in hail at Scarborough, and being swept out to sea alone at Cayton Bay as dusk thickened and an unexpected rip current caught me in its grasp.

Fortunately, I knew the mantra for rip currents: paddle parallel to the beach until you’re out of the rip, then turn and paddle for shore. If you try to paddle against the rip, you’ll just get carried further out, towards panic, exhaustion and the open sea. It’s the same advice for swimmers – swim parallel to the beach. Too many swimmers drown each year trying to fight the rip. At least with a board, you’ve got something to keep you afloat.

Eventually I returned to Saltburn (though I stayed clear of tea houses and nocturnal car parks) and caught gushing overhead waves by moonlight on arms that by now felt like molten steel. But it was worth it to close this chapter of my trip. Further south, the waves wouldn’t pick up again properly until I reached Dorset and Devon, though I still went in – in the snow, sometimes – in places like Cromer and Ramsgate, as I continued in my attempt to surf all the way round Britain.

Around the Coast in Eighty Waves by Jonathan Bennett (Sandstone Press, £8.99)