My own occasional perspective on aspects of Ireland, primarily for those lone swimmers living elsewhere.
I need you to believe me on these two things. To the best of my knowledge, the only three people who have really seen the Yellow Sea, are Tramore inshore fisherman, skipper of the Little Tern John Stubbs, local (international record-holding) kayaker Mick O’Meara …and myself. Three of us three who haunt the Copper Coast,…
The car park, being a winter mid-day, was empty. I was later to arrive than the “two-minute-dip polar bears”, who’d been and gone. I’ve often thought and written about these days, the empty days of open water swimming, no souls but mine and the ocean’s, grey days when getting in the water takes all my…
Rolling across the water from somewhere in the distance I could hear the sound of bells. Under the water’s surface the luminous dial of my watch showed six PM. So. The Angelus Bells, the Catholic call to prayer. Sound travels far across water. It must be coming the whole way from the church in Fenor…
Cork swimmer Diarmuid Herlihy’s Lough Allua Swim has been growing in reputation for the last couple of years, and as one of the swims I’d not previously done, and since also I’d missed this year’s Garnish swim in the same geographical region, I decided to take the long drive south-west to investigate and see and…
I’ve only met Quinton Nelson twice. But since each time I spent a good 15 hours on his boat, the beautiful ex-RNLI boat, the Guy And Clare Hunter, I guess that counts for something. I’ve been (mostly) fortunate enough over the past six years to have met quite a few pilots. Some of them belong to the…
Swimming for me, as for many of you my readers, provides a valuable part of my life, not least of which is the meditative and mostly non-stressful pursuit, where we swim not just in water waves, but also in alpha-waves. (Though occasionally the more dangerous the water is, the better for my mood and preference). But as…
Instead of a beach, shadows loomed over me and the water went from gold to black in sudden deep shade. A wall of dressed stone met my fingertips and loomed two metres over me. It was a pier, stone mooring bollards along the edge. There was another pier twenty or thirty metres away to my…
The Atlantic Ocean is in me. For almost 20 years since it got its hook into me, I’ve been haunting, (in a moderate non-weird way), the Irish Atlantic coast, primarily the west, south and my own Copper Coast in the south-east. For many years, in the depths of grim nights, I have stared into the…
I came across this gem from 1963 in Sports Illustrated archives a couple of years ago. I’m just going to reprint it. Hey, an easy day, no writing! * From Donaghadee in Northern Ireland to Portpatrick in Scotland is a fraction under 21 miles. Between the two land masses the sea rages in swollen tides and hungry eddies. Out…
Ireland loves football. So does your country you say. Soccer, Aussie Rules or NFL, whatever. Ireland likes all football: Soccer, rugby, compromise (Aussie) rules, Gaelic football. All have huge followings. That outnumbers your single national football version. And the biggest is Gaelic football, which is only played within the country and is better supported than…
For some, there is no greater sporting event than the English Channel. Sporting event isn’t even a good description. The Australian surfer Nat Young once said the worst thing to happen surfing was that surfing was seen as a sport instead of art. Similarly, for most swimmers, Channel swimming should be thought more as a…
Sea Thrift that is, Armaria maritima, also known as sea pinks. Ireland’s Copper Coast has a lot of it, growing all along the coast on the cliff edges, in rock crevices and stony ground where nothing else grows. It’s a perennial which has a high drought and salt tolerance, in fact it seems to do best…
Hook Head is one of our favourite places in Ireland. I’ve been lucky enough to finally get a new halfway decent camera so I wanted to take a visit to the Hook for some long-hoped-for photos for the site. A long flat low bare almost treeless peninsula in the south-east, at the other side of…
These are my steps for a great Irish Coffee. A little difficult to make after a swim at the coast, so you’ll be doing this at home. Irish Coffee was invented in Shannon Airport in the 1950’s by the barman in the airport pub. Shannon was also the world’s first duty free airport shopping. It is…
I have been deputized to speak on behalf of the entire country of Ireland in this. We have universal agreement. It may in fact be the only thing we all agree on. March 17th is St. Patrick’s Day, St. Paddy’s Day or just Paddy’s Day. It is not ever St. Patty’s or St. Pattie’s Day.…
I find a lot of similarity between Stephen Redmond’s fantastic Molokai Channel and Lisa Cummins’s two-way English Channel. Waiting for news and updates all through a Sunday afternoon and night. The trackers working intermittently or not at all, and hoping for more updates from the boat through third parties. The agonising last 10 hours, wondering where they…
This is a one subject site, open water swimming. Everything on the site relates to open water swimming. But since open water swimming is part of my life, sometimes other parts of my life or some of my interests get pulled in. They may look tangential but it’s because I’m trying to contextualize my swimming…
Recently I wrote about how I consider safe entry and exit points and possibility of swimming at all tide times to be a critical requirement of a good open water swim location. Kids growing tend to think the whole world is the same as their local experience. Though I didn’t live by the coast growing…
Everyone does it, don’t they? I couldn’t decide what to write about, so as usual in these circumstances, I went to the sea, and figured it out. Here it is: I swam in places old and new. I swam with friends and I made new swimming friends, (some of whom I’ve yet to meet and…
I get asked various questions related to cold because I like to write about it. Those questions often inspire further writing ideas. One thing I realised was there was no good agreement on cold water. A poll of open water swimmers by DNOWS gave the following results. Under 5ºC (41ºF) – 0% Under 10ºC (50ºF) – 7%…
The Celtic Sea is that section of the Atlantic off the south Irish Coast. The Irish Sea is the sea between Ireland and the UK. The Western Approaches is the large rectangular stretch of water south and west of Ireland and the UK, i.e. the Atlantic Isles, including these two seas. The term Western Approaches…
Rapid, massive and savage are also all very good, as are dingin’, crackin’ and the dog’s bollix but cat and manky are pretty bad. Grand is the gold standard for good though sometimes it’s only barely acceptable. A cute hoor is someone of whom to be wide of but a sound man is yer only man while a tool and a chancer are definitely not…
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