THE LOCATIONS
STOP
IRELAND Inis Mór | Serpent’s Lair
AUGUST 3-4
POOL DIVING “THE SERPENT’S LAIR IS ONE OF THOSE PLACES THAT YOU ONLY HEAR STORIES ABOUT,” commented Orlando Duque during a photo shoot together with Gary Hunt ahead of the first ever Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series competition in April 2009. “Finding the place and being able to dive there was one of the highlights of my career. Hopefully in the future we can bring a cliff diving competition to Ireland.” His hopes will get answered on the first weekend of August 2012, when the world’s best cliff divers come to the Aran Islands for the season’s halfway stage. Rumours of the legendary Serpent’s Lair – ‘Poll na Peist’ in Gaelic – circulate world wide throughout the cliff diving community. Similar to numerous other locations on the islands, the Serpent’s Lair is what fishermen call a “blowhole,” or a shoreline window to subterranean caverns, which spurt out water each day as high tide approaches. What differentiates the Serpent’s Lair from other blowholes, though, is that it’s a nearperfect rectangle, thus giving it an inexplicable and mysterious nature. Weathered monuments on awesome cliffs, great labyrinths of limestone, meandering walls, patchwork fields, quiet beaches and a welcoming island of people combine to make the island of Inis Mór breathtaking. It is literally the ‘big island’ among a group of three islands referred to as the Aran Islands and one of the country’s most popular tourist destinations. Off the west of Ireland, on the edge of Europe, a ferry journey from Galway city brings you to this amazing island with its unique geology, archaeology and tradition. It is a place to sense the spirit of Gaelic Ireland and to touch the past.