SURFING IS A mainstream sport in Britain nowadays, but that was not always the case. Thirty years ago it was a disreputable activity for dropouts. You surfed despite everyone – teachers, parents – telling you not to.

It is an addictive pursuit of happiness that precludes love, work and homework. Now so legitimised that even Jonathan Ross talks about it to his chat-show guests, surfing has lost its rebel purity. But has it lost its soul? Maybe not, but when thousands of City lawyers and stockbrokers start hitting the water, you can’t really call it the badlands any more.

In Surf Nation, Alex Wade explores the surfing culture in wild, beautiful spots such as Zennor, in west Cornwall, Croyde in north Devon and the Isle of Lewis. He interviews the legends who, even in their sixties, still hug the coast and live to surf. Memories of surfing with dolphins in empty breaks are pitted against laments about big business taking over the stall.

The breaks are now crowded with city slickers in Quiksilver shorts and Rip Curl wet-suits who learn from webcams where the surf is going off at any time, but do not know the etiquette when they get to the beach – the principal thing being do not drop in on someone else’s wave. Even the dropouts know not to drop in. If someone is already standing up, it’s his wave – or possibly hers, as 30 per cent of surfers are now women.

Surfing in the UK is largely a Celtic pursuit since both swells and surfers are almost all located on the Scottish, Irish, Welsh and Cornish coasts. But Wade finds enthusiasts in Brighton, Newcastle and Norwich. The prejudice that British surfing is as oxymoronic as Jamaican bobsleighing is challenged with muscular accounts of men being towed into 20ft waves growling off the Cornish coast.

There are even professionals now. But competition surfing is not the same as surfing for its own sake, and the average income of a UK pro looks about as healthy as a poet’s.

Surfers are not all airheads. Some have science PhDs. Some have had audiences with the Prince of Wales. Take Pete Jones from Gower (“I’ve never planned anything. I’ve lived my life as if I’m riding a wave”), who drove to Buckingham Palace with his fellow surfing champions straight off the beach. In Hyde Park they changed out of their shorts into something presentable to meet the Prince, who asked them if their moustaches kept them warm in the water.

Surfing is like music – notoriously difficult to translate into language. Yet Wade, an enthusiast (who writes on surfing at timesonline.co.uk/ surfnation), has produced a work in the vein of Tom Wolfe’s The Pump House Gang that is passionate, informative and benign.

He is even generous to Christian Surfers’ International, who stage the Jesus Surf Classic in north Devon. “There is nothing inherently evil about surfing” is their slogan. Now, are they thinking about Pepsi’s surfing advert featuring David Beckham, that well-known footwork genius – or have they been reading too much Herman Melville?

Russell Celyn Jones is a former Welsh junior surfing champion

SURF NATION: In Search of the Fast Lefts and Hollow Rights of Britain and Ireland by Alex Wade

Simon & Schuster, £12.99; 352pp

Buy the book here for the offer price of £12.34 (free p&p)

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