Riding high in Ratho on Europe's biggest wave pool

But will the inland surf resort mean boom or bust for the sport in East Lothian?

Dave starts to find his feet on the artificial waves

As I fell off my fifth wave out of five, I was beginning to feel pretty embarrassed. While I floundered in the water, I was seriously regretting asking a member of staff to take photos of me riding the waves at Lost Shore, Edinburgh’s new surfing resort, which opened on Monday. 

I’d been warned beforehand that surfing in wave pools can be tricky at first, that it isn’t like catching waves in the sea. But when the waves are artificially created by cutting-edge technology to be perfect, everyone else is happily catching them, there’s someone you’ve only just met pointing a smart phone at you and you’ve got an article to write about the new wave pool, the pressure really ramps up. 

Thankfully, at the sixth time of asking, I got the hang of it. You do get significantly less time to assess the oncoming waves than you generally do in the ocean, which is the excuse I’m sticking to for my early poor performance. But once I’d accepted that you do just need to sit in the takeoff spot they tell you to, and that the waves will be exactly the same every time, the fun really got started. 

Lost Shore’s wave pool (split into two halves - one for waves breaking left, one breaking right) is 160 metres long, making it the largest in Europe. The waves I was catching were comfortably among the longest rides I’ve enjoyed as a surfer, despite only being the pool’s ‘cruiser’ (smallest) setting. 

Another defining feature of surfing in Lost Shore’s pool, and another key difference to surfing in the sea, is the relentless nature of the experience. When surfing in the sea, you generally paddle to where you think the waves are going to break, then have some time to ‘sit out back’, resting on your board and waiting for waves. There’s absolutely no breaks in the pool - as soon as you get back to the takeoff spot there’s another wave coming your way. Lost Shore estimates a surfer will catch 13-15 waves in an hour-long session. By the end of my time in the pool I was absolutely exhausted.

The differences between surfing in a pool and surfing in the sea are particularly pronounced for the Edinburgh, East Lothian and Borders surfing community. The waves along Scotland’s southeast coast are notoriously fickle and inconsistent. Even at their best they pale in comparison to breaks in Thurso or Lewis. 

Belhaven Bay is the most easily accessible surfing beach not just from Edinburgh but from the whole of the Central Belt. It’s a great place to learn to surf, but for intermediate surfers or better the conditions there can be extremely frustrating. I’ve heard the experience of surfing at Belhaven be likened to a “washing machine” by more than one surfer.  

So offering smooth, easy to catch waves and a much longer ride that you’re likely to get elsewhere nearby gives Lost Shore an obvious and immediate appeal. The pool will give surfers of all levels the opportunity to improve their wave riding without contending with the dynamic nature of the sea and the irregularity of North Sea swell.