About Us
Coast to Coast Surf School
Coast to Coast Surf School was founded in Dunbar and is 21yrs old this year. It feels like just yesterday we held our first lesson at Belhaven Beach! Today, we proudly operate on Scotland’s West, North, and East coastlines offering a wide range of high quality lessons, courses and surf camps.
What's On?
News
Plan your next surf session with our Scottish Surf Forecast! Get up-to-date wave conditions, weather insights, and tips to make the most of Scotland’s stunning coastline
Events
From surf competitions to community events and adventure-filled gatherings, our events bring together water sports enthusiasts to share unforgettable experiences.
Forecast
Amazing surf adventures to one of Scotland’s beautiful Hebridean Islands. Stunning, quiet beaches and crystal clear water. An ideal opportunity to develop and improve your surfing and learn as we guide you to the best surf spots on the island.
Meet the Team
Sam
Sam
Josh
Josh
Clover
Clover
Malcolm
Malcolm
Quinten
Quinten
Diane
Diane
Work with Coast to Coast. If you’re interested in joining our team, please send your CV and a cover letter to sam@c2csurfschool.com
Coast to Coast Surf Club Memberships
Join the Coast to Coast Membership and become part of our vibrant surf community! With exclusive perks, discounts, free lessons, and access to socials, our memberships are designed to help you progress, connect, and make the most of Scotland’s incredible coastline.
Bronze Coast to Coast Club Membership
Get access to discounts and stay connected with the surfing community!
- Save 20% on all hire purchases.
- Save 10% on all lessons and surf shop purchases.
- Quick and easy booking with your information saved.
- Stay in the loop with monthly newsletters, featuring magical photos, tips, and event updates.
- Access changing rooms when available during opening hours.
Our Ethos at Coast to Coast Surf School
At the heart of everything we do is our commitment to a high quality experience. Whether it’s wearing the warmest wetsuits or getting extra help to stand on a board, we genuinely care about your journey in the water.
Our Four Main Aims
1. Building a Positive Community
For over 20 years we’ve been passionate about creating an inclusive water sports community. Through the way we teach and the events we run, like our relaxed surf and paddleboarding competitions, we bring people together to share the diversity of surf sports, the stoke and positivity in the sea.
2. Excellence in Surf Sports
At the surf centre we run a high performance surfing program for the next generation of aspiring national surf, longboard or bodyboard athletes. Our coaching is more than surf performance as we try to empower our young surfers to be ambassadors for the sport, creating a positive vibe in the sea, creating an understanding of the connection to their environment and promoting safety in the water.
3. Educating for Safety and Sustainability
We emphasise sea safety and environmental protection in all our lessons, courses and surf camps. We are involved in safety groups with partners like the council, coastguard and RNLI. We also work with Wilder Outdoor Education to promote these values. Our goal is to foster respect for our stunning coastline while ensuring everyone stays safe.
4. Exploring with Low Impact
Scotland’s coastline is a treasure, and we’re dedicated to protecting it for future generations. Through our “no trace” policy – both physical and digital – we ensure our adventures leave the smallest footprint possible. We are also moving towards greener operations with 2023 seeing solar panels on our surf and centre and in 2024 our junior wetsuits moving to Natural Rubber allowing for future recycling.
Our Environmental Commitment
We recognise that surfing is not the most environmentally friendly sport – with a heavy reliance on the petro-chemical industry! However, we do deeply care about protecting our coastline, surfing sustainably and reducing our overall impact on the environment.
Protect
BEACH & COASTAL CLEANS
Since our formation in 2004 we have been organising beach cleans. Furthermore, we have partnered with Surfers Against Sewage and other community groups both in East Lothian and the Islands. In 2022 we also started to offer litter pickers for free use from the surf centre. In 2025 the Belhaven Surf Centre will also organise further beach cleans and potentially talks at the centre. The aim is always to leave locations we surf cleaner than we find them.
NO PHYSICAL AND DIGITAL TRACE
We have also been conscious of our impact on surf camps around Scotland. We practice a physical “no trace” policy and run beach cleans on as many tours as possible.
We also offer a digital “no trace” policy. Customers are asked not to promote or name locations on photos or social media. Any photos the surf school take are cropped so locations cannot be identified and we ever announce our Scottish locations. This policy, after 15 years of tours, means the locations we use are as empty as we found them.
Reduce
POWER
We are actively trying to reduce our power needs and go greener. The first stage of this was to move to the purpose built Belhaven surf centre. Our centre uses an air source heat pump, with underfloor heating being installed in 2019. The second stage was to install solar. This was completed in 2023, thanks to grants from the Scottish Government and Be Green. This move has resulted in almost all of the summer power needs for the community centre coming from Solar. In 2025 we will look at our operational power use again to see if we can reduce further.
TRANSPORT
We are actively trying to reduce transport needs. Daily use has massively reduced since moving into the surf centre in 2019. We hope to go further with a move to more greener solutions. In 2024 we moved our tour vehicle to a much more modern diesel 9 seater upgrade (unfortunately electric 9 seaters are both extremely rare and difficult to operate in the remote locations we travel too). We do though plan to upgrade our local van to electric by 2028. We also aim to actively promote greener transport to customers and will be creating discount codes for those using public transport, car sharing or walking/cycling in 2025. Please ask at the office.
REDUCING PACKAGING
Our suppliers are changing – reducing packaging – such as red paddle from 2022 using compostable plastic bags and cardboard for all Paddleboard deliveries. We recycle all packaging we can at this end too.
PAPERLESS OFFICE AND VOUCHERS
We have actively taken our office, booking, vouchers and payment systems online since 2019. Whenever possible we try to run to a paperless environment or use recycled paper. Our marketing is also mainly online now.
RECYCLING EQUIPMENT
We buy quality durable equipment and try to circulate all the equipment (boards and wetsuits) we buy, back into the local surf community while still in very good condition. This gives each board or wetsuit a much longer shelf life away from landfill.
In 2024 we moved to natural rubber wetsuits with c-skin for our junior wetsuits and our staff also moved to natural rubber adult high performance c-skin suits. We hope to take our full stock this way in 2025/2026.
These will be a fully recyclable suit. Reducing the number of future wetsuits hit landfill.
GREEN RETAIL
We aim to promote green retailing. With more environmentally friendly products where we can. In 2025, we will repeat our process with everything we supply and actively see if there are environmentally friendlier alternatives. We are also aware that supplying high quality durable products with longer life spans, is sometimes better than short span more environmentally friendly products due to the energy in production and the need to replace quicker so its a careful balance. In 2025 we are looking at re stocking with both natural rubber wetsuits and also recycled and wooden bodyboards.
Restore
From 2020 onwards we looked how we could contribute positively to Scotlands biodiversity. In 2020-2023 we planted a tree for every customer on our junior holiday courses and tours. This was through trees for life re-wilding the Scottish highlands. We have added well over a 1000 trees now to the same project. In 2024 we diversified a little supporting trees for life again but also a local tree planting project at Winterfield with 350 tree saplings that have or will be planted in the local park as trees and hedges. In 2025 we will again look at options locally for bio diversity improvements in the sea and land.
Plan
ENVIRONMENTAL PLAN 2022+
We worked with ex instructor Adam in 2021/22 (who has an environmental degree) to put together a carbon plan for our surf school. This identified areas to work on our carbon footprint. We know we still need to do more but man of our changes above came from this plan. In 2026 we will do a review again.
Our 2021/22 understanding was we have three main areas of carbon creation. The equipment we buy, the power we use at the surf centre and the transport that both the surf school, our staff and our customers use to do our activities.
Educate
WILDLIFE EDUCATION
In 2021 our instructors took part in wildlife training courses and the surf school became a Wise Adventure member. We pledged to follow best practice with wildlife and environment. We educate in lessons and tours and we are now partnering and promoting sister company Wilder Outdoor education so our customers can benefit from enhanced local marine and environmental knowledge. You can find out more about Wilder Education, a new CIC in 2022, that offers outdoor learning with both Forest and Beach School courses.
LOCAL ENVIRONMENTAL SIGNAGE
We worked with the council to improve safety and environmental communication to the public in 2020/21. The current signs are very simple “Leave nothing but your footprint” in the beach car park.
