For the better part of a decade, Tim Bonython has been travelling to Nazare during the northern hemisphere winter. After his first visit in 2015, he's returned every season since.

Three years ago, Tim was keen to mix up his camera angles and began hiring ski drivers to shoot the wave from the water - the first time it had been done. Rather than the overarching view of Naz, Tim's POV footage took viewers into the battlefield as surfers raced past at blinding speed chased by comically large lumps of water.

Puttting himself in the ring at Nazare wasn't without its dangers but he'd always escaped unharmed.

On Monday, Tim drove up the coast to the La Vaca Gigante - 'the giant cow' - contest at Cantabria, Spain, where he again took to the water to film surfers from up close. This time, however, he came unstuck. Tim and his driver were caught inside by a huge wave and overturned in the soup. The incident has left him "seriously rattled."

Here's Tim with the full story:

"I got invited to the La Vaca Gigantes contest on Monday. The deal was they'd give me a ski driver so I could shoot and do my thing in the lineup, and I'd give them footage to promote their event.

"It was all good, it was a good deal, but the surf got super big, really quickly - I mean it went from three to four metres to ten metres in the space of two hours. The waves just kept on getting bigger and the period longer. What was happening was the waves would closeout out the back and then reform on the inside, and that's where the surfers were sitting and catching waves. I was getting pretty good footage of all the surfers.

"Then a giant set came that didn't back off, it just kept rolling through and it caught us inside. It chased us all the way towards the rocks. There's no beach there, it's just rocks. I was saying to my driver, 'Man, you're going to have to turn out of this.'

"He'd never driven around inside of big waves. You need to go right in front of the wave, turn, and then face it front on while you run into the whitewash, then bring it down. There's an art to it.

"He did the first one kind of OK but the second one, as you see in the edit, fucked us up. The ski went arse up, it threw my camera out of my hands, almost ripping my shoulder off - I can still feel it two days later.

"I lost my camera...that's a $50,000 camera with the lens and viewfinder, a four terabyte card, a custom housing by Dave Kelly, a box of batteries worth $5,000, and three GoPros.

"After the impact I got held underwater for three more waves. I finally got picked up, it was the second attempt, then just got away on a ski before ending up on the rocks. It was pretty gnarly.

"I wasn't good after it: I was a blubbering mess, I was in shock, didn't know what to think. I was worried about my camera...oh man, I was a mess. It's taken a few days to get over."