More birds and bathing around Dublin Bay

Proud to say that for the first time I've completed year-round bathing from the Forty-Foot, Sandycove, Seapoint and Coliemore Harbour, most of it with my stalwart daily-dipping friend Catherine. I reported on the first, exhilarating taking the plunge a year after my op, and finding the stoma could withstand it, here. One of the February swims was the quickest in-and-out, and hardest because of grey skies and blasting winds.  

But if the sun shines, even when it's freezing, the after-change is delightful so long as you've got your back to one of the white walls in full bright light. Here's Catherine after one such swim. 

And of course sea socks and gloves, as recommended to me way back by the Menopausal Mermaids of Pittenweem, Fife, are essential. But even stormy October days can look splendid on the walk from Dun Laoghaire to Sandycove

and Seapoint is always an option if it looks too choppy at the Forty Foot (and, as on this occasion, Sandycove).

North Bull Island comes into its own when the waders and other seabirds are overwintering. 

Plentiful sanderlings were skeetering along the water's edge on this occasion.

Little Egrets are always numerous, but this one looked especially fine while crossing the wooden bridge

 and on a walk where the haunting cries of the curlews could be heard all the way from Clontarf Junction to the island, I managed to close in on one here.

It's usually when crossing over the other bridge a couple of miles further up that you see the waders en masse, especially striking at sunset.

 

Biggest surprise was to get off the DART at Booterstown, right by the small bird reserve there, and find a huge congregation of wigeon

and while gulls seemed fearless to crash in on their number, waders like greenshanks and even redshanks gathered around the edge.

Among visitors came Debbie and Derek from Berlin. I took them on the perfect walk, from Dalkey Station to Coliemore Harbour and Sorrento Point and back. 

and my swim in the harbour - I learnt my lesson after the near-drowning experience never to go beyond the walls - started the process whereby they both ended up taking the plunge at Sandycove.

 With Debbie and Seamus I discovered for the first time the wonders of the South Wall walk.

and was again astonished by the number of waders. Twitchers/birders told me this was the lowest tide of the year, hence the multitudes. 

The tide had turned and was sweeping in by the time we turned back from the lighthouse at the end of the wall. 

A couple of swims later, in early April, I was surprised to be hailed by someone while I was heading to the steps at the Forty Foot, having passed the heron on one of the rocks. 

It turned out that select members of the Irish Baroque Orchestra, admin and players, were down there for a dip between final rehearsal and that evening's riveting performance of Bach's St Matthew Passion. 

The walk from Sandcycover to Dun Laoghaire that day was an especially enriching one, all nature enjoying the spring sun. Two terns on a rock, back early for the summer

and two of the local seals (I've seen many more since).

 Further along, lads diving and jumping by the Roger Casement statue (I've yet to swim from there)

 On another beautiful day, Howth distant below fabulous cirrus and cumulus clouds, 

we swam from Seapoint

 we encountered not only Ireland's Labour leader, Ivana Bacik, from a distance, but also that marvellous actor/director/comedian/writer Liam Hourican with his girlfriend Lara.

It was here that I learned he was directing 'Telemachus', a dramatisation of the opening chapter of Ulysses, in and around the Martello Tower in the week before Bloomsday. The outcome of that and other gems you can read about here.

Two more walks with birds along the way to conclude for now. Back to North Bull Island with dramatic clouds threatening rain that never happened. Poolbeg Towers from the dunes 

and pansies below. 

Little egret in the saltmarsh

and ferry in the distance crossing back over the second bridge

 Good to see a fair few shelducks among the redshanks and black-tailed godwits

 Hadn't been along the Howth cliff walk for ages. It didn't disappoint.

.

and even on the route up, a wren was blithely singing at very close quarters

 but of course the real joy was to be found on the cliff faces 

 and what a joy to move parallel with a flotilla of razorbills and guillemots.

I could go on - May and June yielded more gems - but it's hot sitting here even with the fan on, so enough sea pictures already. Back on Tuesday. 

Swimming and seals before Saoirse

I won't pretend I swam from the Forty Foot this time - no-one did, on the three days I returned to Dublin Bay with daily dipper Catherine; each time Sandycove itself was filled with what one regular called 'visitors',  refugees from the rougher headland so close.

This time I came with the sea socks and gloves I'd inherited via Cally (who loved it here but was this time enjoying warmer waters on Capri 'but without the kick' of the cold water - still not too bad in early October, but the accoutrements meant I could stay in for longer).

The second day was the sunniest. We met an old man with his faithful dog, who was crazymad for the water but had to wait while his master went for a swim, drying off being a problem. No tying up was necessary. The few amiable turnstones who putter around among the regular swimmers had multiplied into a colony more or less keeping to themselves, but unperturbed by my coming closer.

Egrets are especially abundant along the Bay, especially at Booterstown. But this lone one near the Forty Foot that day struck a poetic chord.

On the third day, having got my Zoom classes of the week out of the way, I decided to join Catherine and her distinguished friends for an afternoon matinee screening of The Outrun at Dun Laoghaire's multiplex. We took our swim first, and I walked to Sandycove from Dun Laoghaire DART station.  It was a darker day, but with the sea still fascinating in different lights as I passed the Casement statue

and rocks with cormorants on them, Howth in the distance

to Sandycove. I think there might be a seal in this pic from the previous day

but certainly they were around at even higher tide. The ocular proof is feeble, but palpable.

As I was swimming out of the cove to make it to the set of steps on the other side, I heard three women further out shrieking with laughter. Catherine later discovered that one had felt something under her. Seaweed? A dead body? A big fish? The two seals were playing and swimming around them. 

You'll know, if you've seen The Outrun already, how well this ties in with the film (the above image appears early on, when the protagonist narrator tells us about kelpies). Ronan's character Rona, based on the author of the book of the same title, Amy Liptrot, goes back to her native Orkney to try and recalibrate after major alcohol problems and London rehab. She returns first to her parents' farm, works as an RSPB volunteer and then after a brief relapse seeks an even more isolated island. Early on we see her marvelling at the seals, and at a group of women swimming (Liptrot apparently makes a cameo appearance among them), whom she watches shyly from the shore. 

But it's not until a decisive moment that she ventures into the water - on Christmas Day, I think - comes close to the seals, and the smiles and joy that have been so long withheld through the film's first two thirds immediately surface.

It seemed so serendipitous that all both Catherine and I feel about the necessity of our regular bathes tied in to this epiphany in the film. In a radio interview Ronan told the presenter how she had to act the trepidation of her character at cold-water immersion; she learned to swim as a child in the river Slaney.

I won't write more about the film except to say that while some have found it a bit too long, I think the length is necessary for us to be immersed in Rona's purgatory before the healing can truly begin. And of course Ronan, an actor so loved by the camera with her clairvoyant eyes and her perfect modulations of mood, registers everything. I couldn't fault it.

This has been an especially, or maybe I should just say typically, rich visit to Dublin. Central was J's first exhibition in the new Europa Experience Visitor Centre's gallery, 100 panels by as many artists expressing various aspects of Europe in the Heart of Ireland, curated by the wonderful people of the Hamilton Gallery in Sligo.

But everything else has been unforgettable, too: Irish National Opera's one-off concert performance of Berlioz's Béatrice et Bénédict at the National Concert Hall on Tuesday,  and Teaċ Daṁsa's Nobodaddy, genius inspiration of Michael Keegan-Dolan, preceded by the launch of the big Brian Maguire exhibition. La Grande Illusion, at the Hugh Lane Gallery a mere five minutes away. 

Irish arts firing on all fronts...