The Sunday Times 05th August 2007

Surf's up, Dudes: Britain catches the big wave

Emma Parker Bowles takes her first painful steps on the boards.

My face smashes into the Atlantic Seabed. I am like a human hoe - my feet are poking out of the wave and my chin is furrowing the sand.

There is a whooshing sound in my ears and, as I start to panic, I gulp mouthfuls of water. Suddenly the wave flips me over, then after what seems an eternity my feet find the seabed and I surface. I am gasping and retching, and the salt is stinning my raw, scraped chin.

This is not how I envisaged my first surfing experience. I was thinking Cameron Diaz in Charlies Angels, looking groovy in my board shorts and riding the waves like a pro. Nowhere in my fantasy was there any heaving, spitting or snot.

But that is just one of the delights of being a "kook" = surfer lingo for an inexperienced surfer. And there are a lot of kooks around, because surfing is enjoying a surge in popularity, with people of all ages taking to the waves.

I like the idea of surfing. I Nearly learnt when I lived in Cape Town but I spent too much time smoking the local herb. I watched from the beach and it didn't look that hard.

So why learn now? Well, apart from surfing being all the rage, I'm moving to California, and I plan to start each day by riding the waves instead of inhaling caffeine. I don't want to humiliate myself in front of those Keanu Reeves types, so I picked one of the best surf spots in England - Croyde Beach in North Devon - and arranged to meet Kathleen Spears, England's top female surfer at just 16.

Kath handed me my board; it was the size of a killer whale and made of foam - a "swelly", as a beginner's 8ft board is known. I couldn't carry it on my own. so Kath took the front and I took the back. Forget Californian sunshine: the sky was grey, the sea the colour of mud. With the board on the sand; Kath had me jumping up and down like a jack-in-the-box. There are three ways to get from lying on the board to standing. The professionals use the "pop-up", pushing with their hands on either side of the board (the rails) and leaping into position in one flowing movement.

Most beginners start with a three-stage movement, going from lying down to kneeling, to kneeling on one knee, to standing - by which time the wave is well and truly over. Finally, there is a two-stage move, which is somewhere between the two. Got it? No, neither had I. But by now I was plunging into the choppy Atlantic, squealing as the cold water permeated my wetsuit. I paddled out to sea, looking for the right moment and hoping for the best.

Dude, I caught a wave. Okay, so I didn't move a muscle, but I sped along the crest of that wave all the way back to shore. Officially I was body boarding, but it felt good. The problems started when I tried standning. After two hours of being dumped (wiping out), I crawled out like a shipwreck survivor.

The next day I booked with Surf South West, one of the UK's top surf schools. Darren Burrett and his team could teach a mongoose to surf and, under the eye of hunky Will, I caught my first wave, all the way in to shore and standing on two feet. The adrenaline rush was awesome. And girls, surfer boys have abs you could grate cheese on. Shame my chin looked like corned-beef hash.