From top: Diving by Mark Conlan; Floating by Fuschia Macaree; Blackrock Jump by Marta Barcikowska and Forty Foot by Emily McKeagney – all part of the Nautical Section at Jam Art Prints
Fancy a dip?
Like art?
Read on.
Mark at Jam Art Factory writes:
With the grand stretch in the evening and good clothes drying weather back, it’s got us in the mood for
tortureswimming in the cold seas around Ireland. To celebrate, we’ve got 2 A4 prints from our Nautical section here to giveaway to our lucky winner of this week’s competition.To enter, tell us your favourite swimming spot in Ireland and why.
Lines must close at 10.45pm.
The Jam Art Print competition appears here every second Thursday.
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the second one is good the rest are bad
I like all of them but will only swim in water as least as warm as your bath
I always try to get to Coumeenole when I’m on the Dingle Peninsula. My favourite beach since I was a young lad. A spectacular spot that even had it’s own shipwreck until it was washed away. A friend from Dingle recently told me that it’s pronounced Cow-meenole, I’ve been calling it Coo-meenole all my life. Very embarrassing
I’ve always pronounced it cum-ee-nole and haven’t been corrected yet. That said, a good chunk of my family are from Cork so maybe there is bias :)
It’s a great beach but I wouldn’t be brave enough to swim there. It’s an absolute wonderland for kids, stories of the shipwreck, the mini-waterfall and pool at the back of the beach, the thundering waves when the weather is right, that weird stone chair thing on the clifftop and chips and ice-cream not far from the beach. I can’t wait to take my son there.
all of Ireland’s beaches are tortuous to swim in, cold as a witches extremity, but some are less tortuous at certain times of year. Around Red Island in Skerries is like this. Toe in the water, leg, waist and it’s like lightning through your body. Then stomach, chest, shoulders and when all the parts of you underwater stop seizing up and the everything above water stops shaking and you feel the sun begin to warm you up again, it’s really quite lovely.
Under the water its silence that is occasionally cut by a boat moving out from the harbour, out of the water there is the rumble of conversation on the headland above you and the shrieks of children’s laughter further down the coast. Bliss.
…then you have to get out, hopping across sharp rocks onto sandy steps and some absolute gobdaw has double-parked and blocked you in.
The Emily one is great. I like to swim in the cesspit that is the BS comments section.
and to your credit it’s always more so when you contribute :)
Hard to disagree.
It has to be the Captains, Skerries. This is a deep gully accessible by steps and a ladder even at low tide. This spot is for competent swimmers and the favourite for The Frosties swimming group. We have the Mourne Mountains to the North and the Skerries Islands to the East. Seals and dolphins are seen regularly. And of course we have a sheltered spot to sit and debrief afterwards with our tea and occasional treats.
…behind where I used to live ran the local river…it was quite small but where two streams merged was a pool that was wide and deep and suitable for swimming…as I toddled along one summer evening there was a bather..I sat on the bank to watch but the bather thrashed about and beseeched me to move…in my seven year old innocence I said that if she was drowning those pups I’d take the one with the pink nose…
One my fav swims is off Ilnacullin,i was fortunate to spend some my wild years in Glengarriff and there just is nothing like an early morning open water swim around whats also know as Garnish Island,when in Dublin i tend to try swim(take a dip) in the mornings at Vico Baths.
I had a Norwegian colleague once who said he could never swim off any of Ireland’s coasts as he only swam in water above 15 degrees.
Last Autumn when Little Slightly was here we went down to visit my sister, and ended up going for a swim in one of the beaches south of Courtown. Well, they did, I had not brought appropriate attire nor a change of clothes. There is my sister, bouncing around with assorted grandchildren, and my Little one joins them. While she did enjoy it, she commented that we had a different concept of ‘warm’ water.
I am torn between two beaches. Stradbally beach on the Dingle peninsula, where I got the worst sunburn of my life at age 10, and Gurteen beach, last visited when I was twice that age. Small beach, but lovely day, lovely sand and warm water. Plus I was old enough to have a pint afterwards, before back to the camping park and an lazy night until the next plunge.
But my favourite swimming spot is the Grand Canal by Digby Bridge in Kildare. We would all flock there in the summer, to lay out and tan, or swim about, or more fun to us kids, jump off the lock gates to the lower stretch. The brave ones would do it into the lock when the level was dropped, and there were races up the face of the gates to the top. I never won those. Then over to the towels for a surreptitious goo at the girls in their swimsuits while drying my hair.