Gannet aeronautics off Dalkey Island

Took my first sea dip of the year with one of my New Best Friends in Dublin, Catherine Bunyan, around 'the Forty Foot' at Sandycove, as immortalised (along with the Martello Tower there) by Joyce in the first chapter of Ulysses. I say 'around' because the spot itself, though amazingly quiet, proved too savage for immersion at high tide; prior to donning the socks and gloves I've just received to make staying in cold water for longer possible, cold water swims are time-limited to a few minutes. Catherine was well attired - she's to be seen at a respecful distance here.

I chose to go round the promontory to the sandy cove opposite Dun Laoghaire, and that was good; it's coming up for a year since I first swam here on Bloomsday morning with Swedish friend Sophie and Latvians Artis and Kristaps. There's no record of my immersion this time, but Catherine snapped me betowelled and happy afterwards.

She had to get back to the centre of town after this, but I walked on round to Coliemore Harbour in Dalkey, where I saw more folk swimming and noted that this would be an excellent spot too.

This is possibly the first location going south from the city centre along Dublin bay where the views out are truly wild (North Bull Island is closer), though of course with signs of human occupation which only add to the picturesqueness.

There are colonies of terns and other rarer seabirds out there, as former nature warden Richard Nairn's Wild Shores tells me (annoyingly I've had to leave it in the Dublin flat as part of the Irish library so can't access it now). But I had a good view of a natural phenomenon: first one gannet, then two, performing a ritual repeated at least a dozen times. I'll start with the gannet in the water.

Then we have take-off,

a circling and a soaring between island and harbour, a dipping

then a soar to close above my head

another descent

and a plunge to get a fish

The second gannet did its dive at one end of the island (see top pic, and this detail).

So that was a happy afternoon. I look forward to many more when I return - this time with the gloves and socks.

Addendum (28/5) - cycling up and down the river in London is 'not too shabby', either, as the Irish like to say. It seems timely to add two shots from yesterday evening, heading back from Richmond Park after a glorious afternoon: five swans a-swimming

and then suddenly taking off, a beautiful sight.

Summer bathing places

It has become a point of honour that I must immerse myself in sea or lake if either is available on a summer trip. Hardest was the North Sea off Crail, Fife, last year, in a haar that made the outside cold too. My pal Kari Dickson, who shared the dip and came out equally sharpish, claimed it was colder than the Firth of Forth on New Year's Day, so I do get a brownie point for that one. The five ventures this summer so far have been relatively simple, though I do bear battle scars from one. Despite that, it's rather boring how everyone now goes on about 'wild bathing', with encouragement from the media. There's nothing to it once you make up your mind.

Norfolk (1) I've already covered in a post on a very full day. Most pleasant of all were the daily plunges very close to the idyllic wooden house I had to myself (and an unaffectionate cat called Sebbe) by the water at Vattnäs in Sweden's lake district of Dalarna (pictured up top with the sauna, which I didn't use).  Here's my wonderful host Gun-Britt by the shore, from the window. The lupins, by the way, are beauties, but the locals are in two minds about them - they're invasive, nothing can grow around them. But so long as they can be controlled, I'd be happy to have hosts of them around me. You just need to cut off the heads once the flowering is over to stop the seeds spreading.

I felt immediately welcomed into the bosom of the Andersson family on the evening I arrived, when folk music was being played with a friend who knows all about these things, Lars Thalén, his wife Ingela on the zither, grandson Victor as second fiddle and Victor's girlfriend Anna on saxophone.

The young 'uns were involved in Anna Larsson and Göran Eliasson's latest project in the nearby barn-theatre, a uniformly well cast and superbly played Das Rheingold; for more on that, see the Arts Desk coverage.

Weather was changeable, but that made for many magical lights on the lake - like this one, when I woke up at 5am and snapped before going back to sleep,

and this one after the rains.

Two more, one from above when we went to pick up a fellow writer from his accommodation

and the other from close up again, near to sunset (around 11.30pm, I think).

A blog entry on excursions to the wonderful Anders Zorn Gallery and House in Mora and the rift valley of Styggforsen will have to wait. A full report on my fifth Pärnu Music Festival is, on the other hand, imminent.

How I love Estonia's summer capital; even knowing that the permanent residents have a nasty habit of supporting the country's newly emergent far right, with its links to Marine Le Pen, I feel comfortable among the summer visitors who know how to have fun without the excesses of British holidaymakers. Bathing here requires a considerable wade out in the shallow waters of the eight-mile sandy bay, but it's worth it - especially at midnight, encouraged by doyenne Lucy and several other companions. The disco on the beach throbbed and twinkled boisterously, but there was also a blood-red moon rising. None of this documented, of course, but I have the usual beach pics, most dramatic on the day when I went for a knee-deep paddle and the third of the day's storms threatened beyond the dunes.

It looked so impossibly calm out at sea, despite the cumulo-nimbus forms on the horizon

that I didn't make much haste heading back in the heat - until I saw a spectacular forked lightning display up the river. And the cloud formations over the wetlands looked almost cyclonic.

So I ran through the woodland and into the Villa Katariina where we'd stayed last year, for a drink and a snack, just as the heavens opened. It was over in 20 minutes, so I just had time to dash back to the hotel and on to the evening's concert. All was calmer by the time J arrived - four days of uninterrupted sunshine. I rely on him to offer proof that I did bathe,

eventually swimming out towards the masts of the annual yacht race around the Estonian coast, and then we just water-waded along the coastline

to a river mouth this time without a hint of threat, solitary tansy in the dunes a magnet for bees,

and the shoreline cattle doing their thing as luxury yachts incongruously sailed past them.

More of our bovine friends at the water's edge were to be seen by Lake Windermere nearly two weeks later.

I had a totally wonderful time in Ambleside and Kendal, giving two talks on Shostakovich as part of Lake District Summer Music's day of events which I'll outline anon. I only had the morning of my departure free, and could have gone up to the fells, but wanted the swim so headed for the lake out of town. The National Trust is responsible for fair meadows at Waterhead

and English Heritage looks after the remains of Galava Roman Fort. Not much to see here since most of the stones were carried off for building in Ambleside, but it's an attractive setting, especially with no-one else around.

Clearly bathing where the Romans would have done so wasn't ideal, so I found a rocky outcrop in nearby Borrans Park.

A warning about a rather nasty blue-green algae in the lake made me wary, but the damage actually came from a rock which left me with a black toe - amazing how quickly the bruising went down with Arnica cream. Didn't much like the oozy weeds twisting around my legs either, but otherwise managed to keep swimming towards the boats and back. It was a sticky but mostly rain-free weekend; the bad weather only set in when I was sitting on Windermere Station for the train to Oxenholme and thence back, uneventfully, to London. A week later, and there would have been trouble.

We were very much on the fringes of that while staying in North Norfolk with our friend Jill for the Southrepps Music Festival - the best yet, that I've experienced, at any rate, with unsurpassable performances from, among others, Ben Baker (best Bach Chaconne either I or David Parry have ever heard live), festival doyen Ben Johnson (peerless in Britten's Serenade, with the equally magnificent Martin Owen and Parry conducting a first-rate string group led by Ben), guitarist Sean Shibe creating his usual hold-your-breath magic, Jonathan Bloxham on a flying visit as cellist in breathtaking Mendelssohn Second Piano Trio - ah, that chorale moment! - and two young pianists, Martin James Bartlett and Daniel Lebhardt who both dazzled in two different concerts on the same day and who, I kid you not, cast an erratic Martha Argerich at the Proms last night in the shade, for fine tuning with colleagues, at any rate.

But there are also the swims, walks and crab/lobster lunches at the Overstrand shack to be accommodated. We managed two of the three on Saturday afternoon, but high winds and sea swells meant friend Cally and I didn't take the plunge then. You can see the white horses here,

and just over this cliff with the last of the Alexander there had been a big collapse in June.

Anyway, we got our bathe on Sunday lunchtime between Bach/Mendelssohn and an excellent lunch at the Vernon Arms back in Southrepps. Thus the beach

and the view from above on the walk back.

In about a month we return for our annual churches walk. The gifts of these wonderful retreats just keep on giving - but I hope, in terms of fundraising for the Norfolk Churches Trust, we give back a bit too.

Two paths to a Greek beach

We all need a breather from the 'real world' at the moment, whatever that actually means: retrench so that you can return refreshed to face the most important struggle people of my age and younger have ever known. Otherwise we'll all just crumble and be of no use to anyone. So before I overload on Greek culture ancient and modern, I'm going to start the Nafplio/Spetses travelogue stretch of the blog with two golden afternoons and evenings less than a month ago (hard as that is to believe).

My old university friend Louise lives in Nafplio (Nauplion), where she carries on running the Paralos Gallery, formerly of Athens, selling antique prints, maps and books, which she set up with her beloved husband Panagiotis (he died far too young last year). Nafplio is a place the beauty of which can't have struck me when I came here in 1983 as part of a picaresque adventure and road journey masquerading as an Edinburgh University research project (we in the Greek department each had to write a report on a visit to a place of historical or literary significance - I chose Pylos and Sphacteria, better known long since the days of Thucydides Book 4 as Navarino bay in the south-west of the Peloponnese). Apart from memories of two dogs stuck together in the headlights when we emerged from a restaurant, having argued over an item added to the bill we'd never ordered, the only thing I recall is swimming here and hearing another tourist howling with agony having trodden on a sea-urchin (which I'd done as soon as we drove into Greece and stopped for a dip).

I'd certainly forgotten how the beaches seem a million miles away from the modest bustle of the old town, in what amounts to a national park with the great Venetian fortress (more of that in future) overshadowing the cliff path.

On our first afternoon we walked from that end, past the tempting strand just below the lower fortifications to look back on them

and on past thoughtfully planted bougainvillea

and sandy-striated rockfaces

with the only sounds the sea - there weren't even any motorised boats - and surprisingly plentiful birdsong to a modest beach with a few folk on it that day (there was nobody else the following day, when we arrived a bit later).

Yes, the water was delicious in early November and amenable to long-term bobbing. This shot is actually from the next swim, as the light would suggest, but no harm in introducing it prematurely.

Louise and I apres-swim

and the other two at the distance J prefers.

The sun was setting as we began the walk back, now more populated by walkers and joggers from the town,

and the rocks took on an orange glow

while sound led us to the inhabitants of the holes in them. Anyone identify this little fella?

Just before we got back the car park,

the sunset was good for silhouettes of the plants and shrubs that have either self-seeded or been carefully selected by the municipality to enhance the delight of its citizens.

Second full day in Nafplio, and more elaborate examination of the sights plus a late leisurely lunch meant that Louise drove us to the beach at the other end of the walk rather later than we'd set off on the Wednesday.

This time we had the beach to ourselves (again, if you can identify this thrift-like plant, I'd be grateful),

and the bliss of observing the full sunset, including the colour-change of the atomic-looking cloud straight ahead, while resting after the swim.

A crescent moon appeared on poetic cue

and Venus beneath it, eventually (almost impossible to see at this distance).

I had the mystical sensation of floating rather than walking back, all the while looking at this. What does Newman's Gerontius say of his post-death experience? 'And gentle pressure tells me I am not/Self-moving, but borne forward on my way'.

Thus we reached the car on the beach in the last glimmers of light. Life stripped down to its most delicious essentials. Followed, of course, by elaborate meals chez Louise and at a fine fish restaurant on successive evenings.