This page is intended to help you figure out when its gonna be worth the journey to Devon, or South Wales, and minimise your wasted trips. Although this is not a daily conditions update, it well tell you where to go to get one. Or you can read the Magic Seaweed prediction here.

The easiest way to figure out if there are waves, is to look at the camera! Now, this may seem like the best way, but it does have pros and cons. Only the more popular breaks have cameras, and some of these can be poor quality. Sometimes the lens is covered in rain drops, other times the camera is so far from the beach, at low tide you just cant see anything!

So if you want to surf at Woolacombe, great. If you want to surf at Spekes Mill, not so great. Here's a list of the ones I find useful:

• Eyeball Surfcheck
• The Little Pink Surf Shop

Eyeball have a live feed as-well as cameras close to the beaches of Woolacombe and Saunton.

Little Pink Shop takes good quality pictures daily, although you might want to turn your speakers off before you visit the site.

• Reliable
• Clear
• Accurate

• Conditions may change before you get there

One of the best ways to avoid the conditions changing for the worst while you are driving down the coast, is to understand a bit about waves and weather yourself. If you know roughly what is going to happen all day, this will help prevent your glassy 4-6ft on the dawn camera, turning into a sea of froth by the time you get there!

Don't worry though, you wont have to go back to University to figure it out.

The swell direction is usually from the southwest and pivots to the northwest as storms in the Atlantic tend to move in a northeasterly direction. In the summer the low pressure systems tend to be less frequent and track much further north, so we avoid any swell and consequently end up with flat spells.

Winds are usually from the southwest, which is why Putsborough is sheltered. A strong southwesterly will make everything turn into white water. A wind with any east in it will provide clean waves, even a northerly will provide favourable conditions.

So you need to look for a storm brewing in the Atlantic, but not too close as this will cause the winds we dont want. Remember the further out to sea the storm is, the better quality the wave will be when it arrives. Waves "propogate" at roughly 500 miles in 24 hours, that's about ten degrees longitude on a map. Allow the swell time to get here. However remember that a strong offshore can kill a swell and stop it reaching the bays around Devon.

Ideally a storm in the Atlantic with either a low in the Bay of Biscay or a high over Scotland will be ideal. Check the "North Atlantic now" graphic on the left for current wave heights.

Also check the wave buoys at NOAA. Check Sevenstones and K2, and look at the height and the dominant wave period, ideally around 12 secs upwards. The latter is the time the wave takes to pass, and the further apart the waves, the better stacked up things will be when they reach the shore.

• Not reliant on others
• Wealth of data on the net to use

• It takes some practice to get it right!