Best surf spots in Wellington / Wairarapa

The Wairarapa's favourite family beach, a long punchy sand beach with peaks up and down the bar and a bach village right behind it. Fun for everyone when it is small, but it hides some of the lower North Island's most dangerous rips.

Powerful rock-bottom reef and point breaks off New Zealand's quirkiest fishing village, where bulldozers launch the crayfish fleet straight through the surf. Advanced, cold and heavy when a big S swell lights up Cape Palliser.

The Wairarapa's showpiece, a sand A-frame firing in a sheltered lagoon beneath the iconic Castlepoint lighthouse, clean and surfable on the days it lands while the open coast sits blown out.

Soft, forgiving beach-break peaks over sand that turn punchier when a clean swell pushes in, an hour north of Wellington under the eye of Kāpiti Island. A friendly place to learn, longboard and cruise.

Expert territory on a remote South Wairarapa farm coast, where a wall reels down a rock point over empty reef. Earn it with gravel roads, no reception and no one watching.

An isolated beach break on the wild northern Wairarapa coast, with peaks scattered up and down a long sandy beach when a southerly swell runs. Consistent, usually empty, and exposed to some of the fiercest wind in the country.

A soft, fickle beach break under the dramatic escarpment where the main trunk railway runs right along the sand, the Kāpiti Coast's friendly longboard-and-learner wave half an hour north of Wellington.

On the handful of days a NW swell crosses Cook Strait, the Wellington crew drops everything for this Porirua bay, where a barreling beach and two hollow points produce quality nobody associates with the suburbs.

A heavy, changeable river-mouth bar where Lake Onoke drains into Palliser Bay. When the gravel bar lines up on a S swell it throws fast, hollow barrels, expert-only, below the historic Lake Ferry pub.

A remote rivermouth and reef at the end of the Wairarapa back roads, a long way from anywhere and usually all yours.