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Come on in, the water's lovely

SMALL PRINT: With a few hours to kill last week, my son and I decided to have a swim at the famed Forty Foot in Dublin for the…

Brian O'Connell's face
Brian O'Connell
Fri Aug 12 2011 - 01:00

SMALL PRINT:With a few hours to kill last week, my son and I decided to have a swim at the famed Forty Foot in Dublin for the first time. It was late afternoon when we arrived, and I counted perhaps a dozen other swimmers.

I had flirted with the idea of wearing a wetsuit but was told that unless I was training for a triathlon then wearing one was a no no, especially for an area where swimming shorts are still seen by some as a relative novelty.

Junior was first in, standing on the concrete steps and allowing himself get acclimatised to the water for a time before taking the plunge. There was a great sense of community, and the whole scene was more akin to a Turkish bath, albeit held outdoors and about 100 degrees cooler.

The only way to tackle the Forty Foot is feet first. The water was not as cold as I expected. One swimmer told me it was the warmest he had experienced all summer. “You should be here in February,” he said

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