Bundoran:
If Yeats were a surfer, he may have appreciated the minimalist and direct description of Ireland’s most famous wave. (Hell, this is his old stomping grounds, after all.) It is indeed a perfect horseshoe peak, with a long left tubing wall and a shorter, bowling right. Under double overhead, it really needs a low tide to show its true, fairly perfect form; once it gets big, it’ll start to break through all tides. When it’s giant, the left is a bit too fast to make (not to mention getting caught inside really sucks) but the right stays good up to like four times overhead as there’s a deep channel right there. Paddle out across the bay when it’s big.
Interestingly, The Peak was slated for a boat harbor development for a few years and the town surfers were faced with the tough decision: a famous, crowded wave, or no wave at all. Ritchie Fitzgerald, Matt Britton and other locals went on a campaign, hosting the Quiksilver Masters, encouraging magazine articles and surf videos, all to convince the town council that a wave was actually worth protecting ’cause surfers actually have money to spend these days — we’re no longer pot-smoking, foul-mouthed, immature heathens. (Well, that might be a bit optimistic.) As of ’04, The Peak is officially a protected wave — the first (hopefully not last) one in Ireland.
Mullaghmore Strand:
Two separate waves here, opposite as can be: the wide, flat beachbreak northeast of the headland, in front of the harbor, offers protection from the frequent southwest winds; sandbars can be a bit weak and closeouts are the norm, but the occasional pop up peak may rear up and zip playfully along — enough to coax you into your wetsuit, in any case. Good for beginners.
The other, more, uh, real wave is a left reef/point that breaks out in front of the headland, facing directly into anything the north Atlantic can offer: gale force southwest (onshore) winds, gargantuan winter swells, swirling deepwater currents. They did a documentary about Ritchie Fitz and Gabe Davies towing into this spot called The Eye of the Storm; the Malloys have towed in here on 15-foot days and return almost every fall/winter to try to catch it at size. A very scary wave to say the least, and only for the very crazy or very ballsy.