Soup Bowl:
This is basically the reason you came to Barbados. To sit within eyeshot of the Bowl, watch its every mood, and choose the most opportune times to take her on with all your might. Bathsheba is the kind of place that can be blown out at sunrise and glass off at 11:00 a.m., so going on a vigil is required with Soup Bowl. Many a nap has been ruined by the news that the Bowl went ballistic during the midday hours. When it is on and sizeable Soup Bowl is something to be reckoned with. Deep, thick, and grinding, this wave has lots of water behind it, and slowing down enough for the barrel is sometimes the challenge. And if you catch it offshore, which is less rare then most people think, you are in for a real surprise.
While north swells produce the heaviest barrels and are coveted by top locals and traveling surfers alike, the summer season can produce fun, glassy easterly swells when tropical lows pass to the north of the island. Soup Bowl can also produce fun, rideable waves from the ever-present trade winds. Locals usually ignore the spot when it’s windy and peaky, so you can often find yourself surfing alone at these times, having a good time catching waves by yourself.
Parlour:
Parlour is a wave with many looks. On smaller days, it offers gentle, soft shoulders for beginners and intermediate surfers. It’s almost like a tropical San Onofre. On bigger days, only a few are willing to tackle it and it gets heavy. Really heavy. And it can easily hold up to triple overhead. Parlour is also the most consistent spot in the area, picking up any wind swell scraps as well as any ground swell that hits that side of the island. Where there may not be enough swell to make Soup Bowl work, Parlour will still have fun, clean lines running across the inside reef sections.
Parlour easily handles big winter NE swells. Big winter N swells can produce a rip, but also some solid left-hand walls. Parlour prefers a straight-on east wind swell or southerly swell in the summer produced by passing tropical waves. It will offer up clean, sloping a-frames that are softer on the takeoff, but then zip along on the inside. Check out Parlour if you want to take a break from the Soup Bowl crowd or just want a fun change of pace.
Cattle Wash:
This place is also known as “Sand Bank”. The older surfers call it Cattle Wash. The younger ones call it Sand Bank. This is, as its younger name implies, a sand bank just to the north of Soup Bowl, on the other side of the rocky outcrop north of the Edgewater Hotel. It’s a shifty, often sloppy nugget of wave that has occasional moments of grandeur under just the right conditions. Depending on the way the sand is set up when it chooses to show its face, Cattle Wash can be a dumping right-hand bowl not dissimilar to a certain wave just down the coast or A frame peaks going right and left.
Duppies:
Duppies needs a fairly strong north swell to show and starts to work at head-high to a little overhead. At that size, Duppies resembles a fun California-style point break. It works best at the lowest of tides, as the swell fires across the clear, shallow reef.
As it gets bigger, Duppies is a serious break. At this point, it is best to hook up with a local in order to better learn how the spot works.
When you paddle out at Duppies, regardless of the size, pay attention to the current which runs south. It is recommended that as you jump in at the bottom of the trail, hug the cliffs and paddle north about 100 yards before turning to paddle out to the break. You’ll avoid much of the current and not get stuck paddling through what the locals call the “bone yard”.
Brandon’s:
The south coast of Barbados is one place where the prevailing onshores of Bathsheba can be offshore. Throw in some wind swell coming around the southeast corner of the island, or a south Atlantic groundswell, and you have the makings of a great user-friendly surf zone. Brandon’s is one of the places that really takes advantage of these conditions and can serve up long rolling lefts with the occasional cover-up and sometimes even legitimate bowl sections on the inside.