Good or bad, perfection or disaster, the very first time you took off somewhere on a planned surf trip.....
I will start the ball rolling with my own personal disaster.
1979, just met my wife and for two or three years I had wanted to do the Oz thing. We saved hard during the summer in Abersoch and soon realised our pot wouldn't take two of us down-under. So we reviewed the options and decided on Tenerife. Bought the tickets, got myself a custom Haven 6' 10" from Bude and of we jolly well went. No place planned to stay when we arrived in Los Christianos so we trecked out to the 'rubbish dump' which some people may have heard of. Remember this was pre posh boardbags so my shiny red board was neatly packed in a huge box stuffed with straw, which nearly took off for Mount Tiede in the high wind. Set up camp and surfed my brains out for three weeks living off free pineapples and tuna stew, yum. That first experience of not wearing a fullsuit was memorable.
The plan had been to find work but that soon failed and beacause we only had a fixed ticket for two weeks we were stuck in limbo. After a month or so we decided to work our way back, didn't splash out on a flight as we thought we could get work somewhere like Biarittz. (I can hear you laughing even as I type). Got the ferry over to Cadiz, train up through Spain via Madrid, crossing the metro in rush hour with board and backpacks
Overnight train to the French border, arriving very tired where I left a small bag with tickets, passport, travellers cheques ets on the train and only just managed to retrieve it as the train was pulling out thanks to a cleaner who spotted it and passed it through the window. 
We walked through Biarittz and along Chambre D'amour to La Barre and set up the tent in the dunes near the ice skating ring, got some food and fell asleep exhausted...............only to be woken up two hours later by rats running all over the tent. Quickly packed everything away walked into Bayonne, got a train to Bordeaux, Nantes, Rennes, St Malo and then the boat over to Jersey. This whole journey had taken a week and we certainly would have been better off just flying back from the Canaries but it's an adventure isn't it? A couple of days trying unsucessfully to find work in Jersey ultimately made us surrender and we flew back to Manchester vowing to be better organised next time.
Since that first experience we have had many trips all over the world but we always look back on that with fondness and it always makes us laugh............................
