Kitesurfing in Europe

Destinations

• El Médano, Tenerife, Spain

  A low-key wind town under a volcanic cone on Tenerife's southern tip, where the trades blow on roughly two days in three, all year.

• Fuerteventura, Spain

  A long, bare Atlantic island of dunes and lava where the trade winds blow hardest between May and August.

• Hel Peninsula, Poland

  A sandspit reaching into the Baltic, with one of Europe's largest beginner lagoons on its sheltered side.

• Lisbon Coast, Portugal

  A capital city with a lagoon, a twenty-kilometre beach and one of Europe's heaviest wave spots inside an hour's drive.

• Naxos, Greece

  A Cycladic island where wind funnels between Naxos and Paros and arrives stronger than the forecast.

• Dutch Delta Coast, Netherlands

  Dams, sea inlets and shallow lakes in the Dutch south-west, with wind most of the year and rules worth reading first.

• Nin & Zadar Coast, Croatia

  A shallow Adriatic lagoon beside a mediaeval town, with the maestral in summer and the bora in spring.

• Northern Portugal Coast, Portugal

  The Minho coast north of Porto, where the Nortada blows all summer over river lagoons and Atlantic beaches.

• Paros, Greece

  Two Cycladic beaches on the Meltemi, with a compact eight-week high season in July and August.

• Pelješac Peninsula, Croatia

  A windy channel between Pelješac and Korčula, and one of the busiest wind-sports villages on the Adriatic.

• Rhodes, Greece

  Where the Meltemi meets two seas at the southern tip of Rhodes, and a sandbar divides flat water from waves.

• Sardinia, Italy

  A Mediterranean island with wind on both ends — a shallow flat-water lagoon in the south-west, and one of Italy's windiest straits in the north.

• Western Sicily, Italy

  Over 250 windy days a year on Sicily's south-west coast, on a wave beach well away from the crowds.

• Tarifa, Spain

  A walled Moorish town at the tip of Andalusia, where two seas meet and the wind has drawn riders for thirty years.

• Tuscany & Maremma Coast, Italy

  Shallow, beginner-friendly bays on the Tyrrhenian coast, backed by the wine country and hill towns of the Maremma.