In the years before I’d swum into Loneswimmer Cave, when I rounded Great Newtown Head, if I wanted to progress west into Ronan’s Bay, I either had to swim around Oyen reef, or through the four to five metre gap between the reef and the base of the cliff. It was the same as most…
In a year with a poor summer, any remaining prospect of heat finally slips away like an ebb tide by the second or third weekend of September, to be replaced by the next straw to be grasped in the eternal Irish hope for future good weather, that of the mythical Indian Summer, with which we…
There is an imaginary curving line I could identify starting at The Garden, that sheer-walled hint of a cove in the cliffs on the western side of Tramore Bay. Such a line would terminate over four kilometres east at Brownstown Head on the other side of the bay and it delineates where the open ocean…
I started this Open Water Swimming Year series in 2017, and did not think I would complete it all in a year. I anticipated July and August would to be the most difficult to write, because everyone understands summer, and I would struggle to say anything interesting. All writing holds this truth to be self-evident:…
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…
As I drove around the corner at the No Longer Red House©, I could see a swimmer in a yellow cap ascend the slipway from sand exposed by the dropping tide, and I knew with the immediacy of complete familiarity that bypasses the slower speed of thinking, and though I hadn’t seen him in a…
