Stand up paddle boarding nirvana – does SUP paradise exist?

Stand up paddle boarding will take you to any watery expanse you choose to make a beeline for. Have board and paddle will travel. But what about when you stumble across SUP nirvana? The perfect SUP location/environment that checks all the boxes you put in place. Somewhere you can lay your SUP, and never leave; does the promised land of stand up exist? Would you want to stay even if you found it, full well knowing that other locations are out there and requiring further investigation? A yearning for discovery and what’s round the next bend may halt your laying down of SUP roots, wouldn’t it?

‘Be careful not to chase fairy tales otherwise you might miss your own happy ending.’ (10 points if you know what 90s surf movie that’s from!). Sometimes we’re hell bent finding new places to SUP that we forget to stop, smell the roses and realise what we have is all good. It might be right there in front of our noses and have been all the time!

What does paddling paradise look like? This depends on you and your personal stand up paddle boarding preferences. You could be a SUP wave head who loves nothing better than a walled up point break. This type of set isn’t exactly ten a penny so we’d appreciate if you found a perfect break, spot on for SUP, you’d want to stay forever.

The perfect stand up paddle boarding spot?

And for those flat water stand up paddlers out there nothing’s more tantalising than butter smooth glassy water just begging you to draw strokes atop Mother Nature’s naturally fluid canvas. Should you fall upon such a location would you be content and happy to stay put and knife the butter day after day. Having your favourite biscuits every day for six months may you make you sick to death of your favourite biscuits – or maybe not.

Living with such things as social media and interweb easy access means the bombardment of perfect SUP locations is abundant. You can’t fail to get wanderlust with this type of content filling your device screens. We’re not suggesting you become a hermit and disconnect from the matrix totally (unless you want to of course). But it’s good to keep a sense of realism about things.

Something that could halt potential SUP spot investigation is the current COVID travel restrictions. When these eventually (fingers crossed) lift we’ll be free to spread our SUP wings and discover farther flung spots. Unfortunately, it’s also become ever more difficult to travel with any kind of oversize sports equipment. Inflatable SUP technology is one solution but sometimes you may require a hard shell board which is way more headache inducing.

Perhaps when we find our paddling paradise sticking with it is the best option. There’d be less hassle for sure. But that itch would start no doubt, and itches need to be scratched. Nomadic destiny is therefore ingrained in our DNA. There’s no easy answer but it’ll certainly be fun trying to find your stand up paddle boarding idyll and determining whether you could remain there or not.

If you’re itching to discover new SUP spots or your own paddling utopia then this bitesize travel guide from McCOnks may help steer –

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