I have tingles in both hands. One is from jellyfish stings, one is from sensation returning after an almost two hour June swim. I can’t tell which is which. The Blue Stinger appeared in front of me at the surface, right as I reached forward. Its tentacles enveloped my hand, arm and shoulders like a…
We claim victory. Or survival. We swim out into Bone Cold water, and we claim it. Metaphorically speaking, we mark the nadir of winter at the end of February out in the water, bleeding our skin colour into the icy greyblackgreen, exchanging heat for some ludicrous sense of playing a game with the ocean, that…
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…
I feel. Shamanistic. I feel. I feel atavistic and pantheistic. I feel touched by what they could have, maybe did call the divine wind. Though only my fingers and eyes move here, a wind, no, a storm is blowing through me. I feel wracked, my soul exposed and blown to shreds. Around my head a cloud…
The weather on Saturday the second of July was horrible. The air was cool, a mere 14 degrees. It had been raining for three weeks, and the early promise of summer, a sly murmur spoken over a mere four days at the beginning of June had long vanished and the water temperature had dropped back…
For five years I’ve posted swim advice for the casual swimmers who may take to the water on Christmas Day or over the holiday period. I’m always aware that of the 10,000 people who will take to the water on Christmas Day in Ireland alone, only one or two thousand at best of those will see the post. Most of…
LoneSwimmer 