Surfing Aileen's: the monster below the Cliffs of Moher

The wave's real name, in Irish, is Aill na Searrach, which translates as the leap of the foals. Legend has it that when Christianity arrived in Ireland, the Tuatha Dé Danann, the old gods of the land, turned themselves into horses to hide in caves beneath the cliffs. One day, seven foals are said to have emerged, startled by daylight, and galloped along the Cliffs of Moher until they plunged over the edge, right at the spot that now bears their name.

Aileen's, the anglicised version of the name, is built on a myth of falling and speed before it's even a wave. Plenty of surfers who've tamed it describe feeling something of that raw energy in the way the reef unloads all at once, without warning.

The Cliffs of Moher themselves rise to 214 metres (702 feet) at their highest point, about four kilometres southwest of the village of Doolin. They're part of the Burren and Cliffs of Moher UNESCO Global Geopark, international recognition for the geology and landscape of this stretch of coast.

Aileen's wasn't identified as a surfable wave until 2004, when photographer Mickey Smith and a group of bodyboarders spotted the reef's potential from the clifftop. But spotting a wave of this scale and actually surfing it are two different things: it took until October 2005 for Irish champion John McCarthy and Dave Blunt to ride it for the first time, towed in behind a jet ski.

Two years later, in 2007, Easkey Britton became the first woman to take on Aileen's at just 21, an episode captured in the documentary Waveriders. Britton, from Rossnowlagh in County Donegal, went on to become five-time Irish national champion and one of the most recognised names in Irish women's surfing.

Since then, a small handful of names have taken it on: Irishman Fergal Smith, who started surfing around age 11 on the west coast before becoming one of Irish big-wave surfing's biggest names (he's since left the pro circuit for organic farming in Clare), Englishman Tom Lowe, Irishman Cain Kilcullen, and in 2015 Hawaiian Shane Dorian, proof the wave's reputation now reaches well beyond Ireland.

Aileen's is a right-hand reef break that jacks up over a rocky bottom at the foot of the cliffs, forming, when everything lines up, an almost perfectly regular crescent for a wave of this size. Paddling in, it holds up to roughly 7.5 metres (25 feet) of face; towed in behind a jet ski, it can top 15 metres (50 feet) and beyond.

It only works on a big storm swell out of the west to northwest, powerful enough to have crossed the whole North Atlantic before hitting the reef. The wind you want is light, ideally from the east; the moment it swings onshore, the wall closes up and the session becomes both unridable and far more dangerous.

The tide window sits between mid and high tide. Outside that window and those very specific swell conditions, the reef simply stays invisible, an ordinary stretch of sea below an extraordinary cliff.

There's no easy way into Aileen's, and that's partly what protects it. By land, it takes roughly thirty minutes down a narrow goat track from the clifftop to the boulders, before you've even dipped a toe in the water. From there, there's still a paddle of around three kilometres to reach the lineup.

Most serious surfers now go by boat or jet ski, launching from the small fishing pier at Doolin, about ten kilometres north. Doolin, known for its traditional Irish music, also serves as the departure point for tourist boat tours that run along the base of the cliffs, a far gentler way to take in the scenery without ever touching the water.

For anyone who just wants to see the wave without surfing it, the developed and mostly secured Cliffs of Moher walking path offers a spectacular view of the reef on a big swell day, with zero risk involved.

Aileen's isn't for anyone but a handful of the world's elite big-wave surfers. There's no beach nearby, no surf school, no lifeguard, and the remoteness makes any emergency evacuation slow and complicated. An incident here gets handled by whoever's out on the water, not by an emergency service arriving in minutes.

The reef itself is shallow and rocky: a badly handled wipeout can end on the rock rather than in open water. The 214 metres of cliff towering over the spot add an almost theatrical dimension to the danger, without ever making it less real.

It's exactly this combination, wave size, remoteness, no safety net, that explains why Aileen's stays reserved for a very small circle of surfers, experienced and well-supported, never a solo session to try out big waves for the first time.

Lahinch, about fifteen kilometres to the southeast, remains the logical base for sleeping, eating and surfing far more manageable waves: it's where you'll find the surf schools, the surf shops, and most of County Clare's ocean-focused life. It's also from Lahinch that most surfers watch the forecast before making a play for Aileen's.

Crab Island, near Doolin, rounds out the county's more demanding spots, a left-hand reef reserved for advanced to expert surfers, though nowhere near Aileen's scale.

Further north, in County Sligo, Mullaghmore Head carries the reputation of Ireland's heaviest big wave, two to three hours away by road: the two spots come up in the same breath whenever big Irish surf gets mentioned.