How we score · stayinghomesucks.com

Every place gets a score out of 100 for the week from your date and where you leave from. 75 and up is great, 60 and up is worth the trip, under 45 is poor. A perfect score needs perfect waves or snow and an easy journey, so even a very good trip rarely passes 85.

Conditions: 80 points

Surf. Swell size against your level (35): beginner 1–3 ft, intermediate 3–5 ft, expert 6 ft and up, swell period (15), swell direction against the way the beach faces (10), and wind (20). Offshore wind scores best. Onshore wind costs the wind points and chops the waves up, so it cuts the swell points too. Over your level's ceiling a spot scores zero: we never send you into surf beyond you. Below the swell your level needs, it scores less and less however clean the wind, because there is nothing to ride.

Ski. Snow cover (25), fresh snow over the last three days (25), cold enough to keep it (10), wind light enough for the top lifts (10) and visibility (10). The top of the mountain decides. Lenses move weight: off-piste favours fresh snow and height, family favours calm, clear days.

Your dates. Pick the day you want to go. We look at the 7 days from then. The week is judged on its best four days, so one good day cannot carry it. Each card shows the forecast for all 7 days: swell in feet, the interval between waves, where the wind comes from and the temperature.

Past the forecast. The forecast reaches about 10 days. Further ahead we score what is typical for that week of the year, from years of history scored the same way. The card then shows what the place is usually like that week, marked “usually”. Past the forecast the swell figure is the whole sea, wind waves included, so it runs a little big. Typical is not a forecast: it tells you where is usually good then, not what will happen.

Water temperature. A surf card says how warm the sea usually is that month, and the wetsuit for it, for example “Water about 15°C: 4/3 wetsuit and boots”. The temperature is the typical one for the month, from ten years of NOAA's satellite and buoy record at the nearest patch of sea, not a forecast. The wetsuit comes from Rip Curl's thickness guide; wind and how you feel the cold can move it a thickness either way.

A region's score is its best spot's. The card names that spot, so on an onshore week the answer can be “go, but surf the sheltered one”.

Where a spot faces, its offshore wind, how sheltered it is, the level it suits and the swell it works in are our own estimates from public map and wave data, tested against a local surfer's list before we use them. We mark them “estimated”.

The trip: 20 points

We work out the least painful sensible way there: drive, drive and cross, or fly. It is more than time. Queues at the airport count more than sitting on a plane, a long drive tires you after three hours, each change costs, a flight that goes only a few times a week costs more, and so does a long transfer from the airport to the place.

What that costs depends on how long you're away. A five-hour journey is a small part of a week but most of a weekend. So on a longer trip, a better place further away can beat a worse one nearby.

Flights count only where there is a direct route that month, from Wikipedia's airport pages and the UK Civil Aviation Authority's monthly flight counts. Where we have not checked a route, the card says so. Road times are our estimates: about 90 km/h on main roads, slower in the mountains.

Under Filters you can ask for driving or flying only, one country, a longest journey or a most you will spend.

The verdict

If nothing scores 60 or more, we say Stay home and tell you why. Past the forecast we only say Usually worth it or Usually not worth it, never Stay home. Where we have no history either, we say Too early to call.

What money can't buy

We earn a commission when you book through a button marked Ad. Commission never changes a score or the order of results. The code that scores cannot see the code that counts money.

Rough costs

Each trip shows a rough cost per person, two sharing: getting there, the stay, food, and board or ski hire and lift passes. It is worked out by code from public figures, not from a live search: UK pump prices, the euro rate, official price levels for each country and season, and a short list of published prices such as lift passes and the Eurotunnel. Flights use the cheapest fare travellers have seen lately for that route and month, on any airline; where none has been seen, an estimate from distance and season across every airline on the route. The flight button opens a Skyscanner search across all airlines for your dates. We give a range, because real prices move with the date you book. It is a guide, not a quote, and it never changes a score.

Price bands

Where we show £, ££ or £££, it is the country's price level against the EU average, from Eurostat. We only show it once a second source agrees, so most places show nothing yet.

Where our data comes from

Every place fact is checked against at least two independent open sources, or is one of our marked estimates. We thank them all.

Forecasts. Forecast data: ECMWF, DWD and Météo-France, served by Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0). Changed by us. Generated using E.U. Copernicus Marine Service Information.
Where the beds are. Place data: Overture Maps Foundation (overturemaps.org), from Meta, Microsoft, Foursquare and AllThePlaces. Foursquare data © 2024 Foursquare Labs, Inc., Apache 2.0, changed by Overture and by us.
Place names and positions. Place data: GeoNames (geonames.org), CC BY 4.0
Coastlines far from shore. Made with Natural Earth. Free vector and raster map data @ naturalearthdata.com.
Heights. Elevation: Copernicus DEM GLO-90, © DLR e.V. 2010-2014 and © Airbus Defence and Space GmbH 2014-2018 provided under COPERNICUS by the European Union and ESA; all rights reserved. Served by Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0).
Ten years of past waves. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026. Neither the European Commission nor ECMWF is responsible for any use of it. Served by Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0).
Our surf estimates. © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), Overture Maps Foundation. Made with Natural Earth. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
Typical conditions: wind and weather. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026. Neither the European Commission nor ECMWF is responsible for any use of it. ERA5, served by Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0).
Typical conditions: snow. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026. Neither the European Commission nor ECMWF is responsible for any use of it. ERA5-Land, served by Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0).
Typical sea temperature. Sea temperature: NOAA OISST v2.1 data provided by the NOAA PSL, Boulder, Colorado, USA, from their website at psl.noaa.gov.
Fares. Fares: the cheapest prices seen lately by Aviasales travellers, through Travelpayouts. A guide, not a quote.
Price levels. Source: Eurostat
Airports. OurAirports (public domain)
Places and airports. Wikidata (CC0)
Direct flights. Flight routes: Wikipedia contributors, from the airports' pages (CC BY-SA 4.0). Changed by us. Our route table is shared under the same licence.
How often flights go. Flight frequencies: UK Civil Aviation Authority punctuality statistics, used to weight the score.
Trip costs: fuel. Fuel prices: Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Trip costs: exchange rates. Exchange rates. Source: ECB statistics.
Trip costs: price levels. Price levels for the UK and Morocco: World Bank, World Development Indicators (CC BY 4.0). Changed by us.
Trip costs: flight seasons. Air fare seasons: Office for National Statistics, CPI index 07.3.3 (D7EH). Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Trip costs: hotel prices. Elaboración propia con datos extraídos del sitio web del INE: www.ine.es