Now that the ‘long hot summer’ is in recess, I have time to share my time travel feelings that it brought on. The last time we had such a long spell of hot and dry weather, 1976, I lived outside Dublin and went swimming every day. I wanted to swim off the ‘Forty Foot‘ but it was men-only at that time. As a keen swimmer I resented the exclusion of women at the best swimming spot on the East Coast of Ireland. I would go into the water at Sandycove Beach nearby and swim around to the Forty Foot, to the displeasure of the naked male swimmers there.
Sometimes I would be brave enough to try to go into the sea at the Forty Foot but was always challenged and prevented from doing so by men who were big enough and angry enough for me to leave, having made my personal protest. Protests, individual and group, continued until the men-only restriction was lifted but that was many years later. Have a men-only swimming spot if you wish, but not in the very best place on the coast. My days of swimming in the sea are not over but I’ve not been back to the Forty Foot since then. Must put it on my travel agenda!
Image from http://outdoorswimming.ie/Co/Dublin/40_foot.html