"Here's someone dressed as a hamburger. It's Irish beef being thrown into the sea," the man with the microphone roared over the roar of waves, wind and rain. It was noon on Bray beach in Co Wicklow yesterday and about 130 people, some of them in fancy dress, were throwing themselves into the sea for the New Year's Day swim.
It was more of a dip than a swim, and the large crowd of spectators appeared to be as wet as the swimmers, whose flesh, lashed by the rain, turned bright pink.
"It's easy. You get in. You go numb. And you don't feel anything. It's only when you get out you realise you can't move your fingers," a young swimmer, Lynn McDermott, said, eyeing the porridge-coloured swell before the event.
The organiser of the swim, John McEvoy, wore a rubber Albert Reynolds mask, which he took off before striding into the surf.
Another swimmer went in as the kilted, face-painted Braveheart, brandishing his sword, arms aloft before he was swept off his feet by a wave.
There was a rather masculine Dolly Parton with dented plastic breasts, and a woman in pink with a sign describing herself as a "pregnant fairy".
Another man carried a large golf umbrella covered with bubble wrap with long streamers of plastic attached. "It's a jellyfish," someone said earlier in an indignant tone. "Anybody'd know that."
Yesterday was the 15th New Year's Day swim, Mr McEvoy said. The event has raised almost £60,000 for local charities since it started.
