Do you wonder about your favourite food or song or book? Do you ask yourself, what’s my favourite swim? Or do you maybe even tell yourself after most swims, that “that one, that one was my favourite”? Like I do? We do this, assign rankings and preferences. But I am unsure why. Sometimes it’s idle, sometimes it’s…
The oceans are warming. It’s a rare winter that the Atlantic here on the Copper Coast drops below six degrees anymore. It hasn’t happened since but in the bitter winter of 2009/2010, the water temperature in Tramore Bay dropped below five degrees before the end of November. I went swimming that November while snow lay on…
Yea. I have gathered you all together here today, to hear words. As the Bible speaketh not of Holy Natation, go thee therefore onto The Google, wherefore thou shalt find that despite the clamminess of his skin and the inconsistent capitalisation of his exalted name, LoneSwimmer is the Prophet of Cold Water and loneswimmer.com is the…
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…
It may have been a summer or an early autumn day, back when the working class of Ireland all went on holiday in the first week of August, sometime during what I would later discover had come to be known as the New Age or Age of Aquarius elsewhere in the world. It’s not even a whole day…
In the movie of his life, “plump, stately” Donal Buckley will dramatically played by George Clooney, with swimming stunts by seven times world 50 metre champion Mark Foster, a platoon of Irish Army Rangers, and a seal. A real seal. A Common Seal. Born in 19whatever, Ireland’s year of Independence and nine months after his mother went…
Finbarr Hedderman and the North Channel – I – Flowery crap. Finbarr Hedderman and the North Channel – II – Famous Pilot, Famous Boat. Finbarr Hedderman and the North Channel – III – Anyone For An Early Morning Dip? Finbarr Hedderman and the North Channel – IV – Just Eight laps of Sandycove Finbarr Hedderman…
Swimming is a lot of things to different people at different times, even to me. But what it isn’t, is a method of travel. We may travel long distances while swimming, we may even be swimming to a destination, but we are not traveling per se. But somehow, I’d traveled. The buildings stopped before I…
Subconsciously, I’d pulled the goggles from my face, feeling the familiar discomfort around my eyes as the suction released. They dangled weightless from my fingers. Above the seafront buildings rose a hill and a town. A road led through the near buildings to disappear into tiered houses that fronted a low hill. I was stunned.…
I’d swum a double handful of strokes on one breath, and seen so little and yet so much. Only water, rocks, kelp, light? You don’t understand. Time to breath and navigate, I lifted my head. Golden sunlight dazzled me, washed over me. I know it had been months, the previous autumn since I’d last swum…
Winter reduces my range. I swim at the Guillamenes, along the cliffs and shore of Tramore Bay. Maybe, just maybe, I might get down to Sandycove for a lap. Days pass when I see no-one, arriving, swimming and leaving without a soul. Spring comes with almost imperceptibly warming water and air and increase in the number…
Part 1 To step back a moment, the first post didn’t exactly explain why Owen and I were on the boat. I can only surmise that when Trent asked me to crew early on in the week, I think it was partly because we’d already been touch by email and Twitter, and partly because of…
Hello friends, future friends, open water swimmers, readers, Aspirants and marathon swimmers! For some time Evan Morrison and some others and myself have been discussing global marathon swimming. Marathon swimming is a tiny but still growing sport. As a group, we wish to see marathon swimming continue to be celebrated and encouraged and confusion with other types…
LoneSwimmer 