PUMPING! We have just got back from Ireland again.
We were there for 3 weeks of relentless Winter swell, it was epic, waves everywhere, every day!
The first 2 weeks we scored sick surf in Lahinch, Mayo, Easkey and Bundoran.
At the start of week three we got a call from my mate in Donegal who said that a mysto left point was gonna break the next morning. He sent us the map co-ordinates and said we had to be there by 7.30am at the latest. We left Bundoran at 5.15am and made our way North, the roads were empty and as the sun rose over the horizon so did the wind, by the time we got to Glenveagh National park it was gusting at 40mph and the rain was torrential. After a while google maps took us off the main road and onto a track through peat bogs. We slowly made our way for about 2 km; the ground was flooded and it was hard to see where we were going.
Eventually we caught sight of the sea in the distance, immediately you could feel the vibe change in the van, everyone was amped. 5 minutes later we were stood on a weather beaten headland looking down on perfect 8 to 10ft dredgers, unloading top to bottom down a shallow boulder point, it was super heavy; my first thought was…”I hope that’s not where we’re surfing it looks brutal!”
A pick up and quad bike were parked up but we couldn’t see anyone out the back. We scanned the set up top to bottom and then saw two surfers slowly appear paddling out half way up the point through a key-hole in the cliff face. They instantly gave the waves scale and it became clear that we had underestimated how big it was; it wasn’t 8 to 10ft on the outside it was more like 10 to 12ft and 4 to 6ft on the inside.
We quickly got changed whilst trying to work out how to get down the cliff, it was a vertical drop down onto barnacle encrusted boulders.
Another quad appeared on the track heading towards us. As it got closer we could see the driver was already in his wetsuit with a mid-length Channel Islands twin pin strapped to the back. The dude drove straight past us without even acknowledging our existence, parked up and then ran back up the track straight past us again towards the inside of the point. We instantly gave chase, the dude looked back, obviously rattled but kept running and didn’t look back again.
After a couple of minutes charging fearlessly through knee to waist deep Irish bog we saw the dude disappear and as we got closer I spotted a small goat path winding its way down the cliff. It was pretty sketchy but eventually we made our way to the bottom. The local shredder had already entered the water and was being sucked through the key-hole at running pace by the rip, he very quickly disappeared and then a solid overhead set came around the corner, broke top to bottom and a 5ft high wall of white water washed through the key-hole and up onto the grass where we were stood….heavy!
As the last wave of the set broke and the water started to suck back out we knew this was our chance, there was no time to hesitate; we ran as fast as we could over the waist high boulders and then dived with our boards underneath us onto the white water holding on for dear life as we got pulled out to sea – the nearest experience I have ever had to this was the drop at the end of the Jumangi River Rapids at Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Orlando. The only difference was that that was a beautiful Spring day in Florida and this was in 12 degree water in the middle of nowhere on the desolate far West Coast of Northern Donegal in November.
We surfed for 3 hours and I had 3 waves – I went over the falls on my first one, spun out at full speed on the bottom turn on my 2nd one (a 6’2 twinny was definately the wrong choice for this day) and then managed to get a solid 6ft peeler all the way to the channel and decided it was time to retreat.
In the pub that night I felt like I was a true big wave pioneer, a bit like Kai Lenny must feel after he’s been charging Jaws all day …..ha ha!
The next day we headed across to Portrush, hooked up with Irish surfing legend Andy Hill and surfed lovely 3 to 4ft White Rocks, he took a couple of sic pics – one of them is in the gallery.
Check the edit below, this was shot at home in Cornwall and Ireland in October…..