Rodiles — local surf knowledge

The wave

Rodiles breaks at the mouth of the Villaviciosa estuary, and that is what sets it apart from the other beaches in the area: it is not a beach break that makes do with any swell, it is a rivermouth that needs groundswell to work.

Type: rivermouth, at the mouth of the estuary.
It needs real period. With short wind swell there is no wave, however much height the forecast shows.
It depends on the tide in a way most beaches do not: you surf it from mid tide upwards, and low tide is to be avoided.

Size

Heights are given on the scale of the San Lorenzo page, which is the reference every beach in the area is compared against.

The minimum size is not a number on its own: it comes paired with the period.

Minimum: 0.8 m if the period is 12 s, or 1 m if it is 10 s. With less period it needs even more swell.
At its best: between 1 and 1.3 m with a long period.
Maximum: 1.6 m. Above that it is too much.

Period

It counts for more here than at an ordinary beach break, because without groundswell the wave does not form. And it comes paired with size: the less period, the more swell it needs.

Minimum: 10 s, and asking for 1 m of swell.
The good range: 12 to 15 s. At 12 s, 0.8 m is enough.
At 9 s it struggles, and at 8 s there is no wave, whatever the swell is doing.
At 16 s or more it gets worse: as at every beach in the area, with that much period a lot of water builds up and the banks are not ready for it.

Swell direction

It sits inside the estuary, so its window is narrow: only the north-west gets in.

Best: from 301° to 348°, from north-west to north-north-west.
Full range: from 289° to 359°. At the edges it still gets in, but it asks for a bit more size.
Outside that it does not get in. With a straight northerly, north-easterly or easterly swell there is no wave, however good the rest is.

Wind

Best: from 106° (east-south-east) to 186° (south), the offshore.
Westerly cross-shores are handled well: from 244° to 303° the beach holds up, because it has a hill on its left that blocks that wind. That is what sets it apart from the open beaches in the area, where the westerly comes in from the side.
Bad: northerlies and north-westerlies, which blow straight in.

Tide

Together with the period, the first thing to check.

You surf it from mid to high and from high to mid.
Avoid low tide.
High tide is not a problem here, unlike at other beaches in the area.

How it compares with the others

Rodiles is one of the narrow-window beaches in the set, and for different reasons from Peñarrubia:

Peñarrubia is fussy about the tide (it does not work at high tide); Rodiles is fussy about the period and the tide at once, and it wants the tide the other way round: from mid upwards.
Compared with Playa España, which is about 12 km away and also in Villaviciosa, Rodiles asks for a lot more period and has a tighter swell window. Playa España holds up at 8–9 s with size; at 9 s Rodiles is already limping and at 8 s it has nothing.
Its forecast point is its own: it does not share a grid cell with any other beach in the app, so its forecast is not a neighbour's.

Put another way: it is not a beach to go and check in case there is something. It is a beach you go to when the forecast says north-west, long period and a rising tide, and then there are not many better.