My dip came three-weeks-past Bloomsday. I joined a handful of others, an hour before work. As I steadied myself in the briney, a grinning head bobbed up beside me to acclaim \u2018the best weather for a while\u2019. There was a light drizzle. The sea, however, was an enveloping balm. I felt unusually buoyant, and by some tidal freak, effortlessly floated at the mouth of the inlet. For half an hour, perhaps more, I held this position, watching quick dippers jump in and out, and athletic swimmers splashing past me and towards the horizon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n My mind emptied and wandered. Before I made for dry land, however, a word came to me \u2013 omphalos. Like many terms and phrases in Joyce\u2019s masterpiece, it had stretched my vocabulary. Chambers has it thus \u2018i. a navel, ii, a boss, iii. a stone at Delphi believed to to mark the centre of the world, iv. a centre\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Four times the word appears in the novel. Its second iteration comes in Mulligan\u2019s explanation of the Martello tower, as he wraps up his shaving-foam Mass. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I swivelled to face the land, and the Martello Tower in question, a few meters above the shore. Over 150 of these circular structures line the coasts of our islands \u2013 built in the 1820s to repel the French. Sandycove\u2019s unusually modest example Mulligan \u2013 a bombast \u2013 pronounces, \u2018is the omphalous\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of my current spot, treading the watery swirl off shore, might his grand claim be apt?.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dreamy, in marine animation, I imagine myself the pivot around which the world is spinning. I have entered a fugue, a flux, a flotation fantasy. Time is stretching and compressing. Aches have evaporated. I am on the cusp of revelation, It comes to me that I am at the omphalous, transcendental rapture its gift. I wallow on for a while, until, light-headed, I reluctantly ascend the stone steps towards towel, train and travails.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Forty Foot has fair claim to be Ireland\u2019s most famous sea-swimming spot. Lockdown apparently turbo-charged its popularity. By the time I left, there may have been 40 bathers at some stage of their morning dip, inclemency notwithstanding. It is ungated and unsupervised, the only \u2018facility\u2019, an open concrete changing shelter. (The local swimming club sometimes operate a \u2018kitchen\u2019 on site). It is a brisk ten-minute walk from Sandycove station, itself a shade less than 30 minutes from the centre of Dublin. Trains in both directions run every ten minutes or so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A popular place to enjoy the waves for more than 250 years, its current form dates back to 1863. Then, the Kingstown Commissioners (the local authority for what is now known as D\u00fan Laoghaire) obtained permission from the Ballast Board (now less confusingly named the Dublin Port Company) to create a public bathing space. They cut steps, attached rails, and bolted dramatic diving boards to the rocks. A more conventional beached swimming spot was established twenty paces away within the bay itself. It too is still there. The boards are gone, alas, but brave swimmers still plummet from the cliffs into the twenty feet depth of choppy waters below. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For many years The Forty Foot was an exclusively male enclave, and popular with naturists. Only in 1974 did the \u2018Dublin City Women\u2019s Invasion Force\u2019 rush the promontory, with placards demanding equal access. As recently as 2014 the local swimming club ended its ban on women members. The crowd that I shared the waves with was entirely mixed, and delightfully friendly. The idea that such a joyous, natural wonder should be anything other than a universal pleasure is jarring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I left with an invigorating sense of having lived, just for a moment, through immediate experience alone. Its a tonic that refreshes me yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/tim-dawson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/FortyFootOverview-1024x726.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/tim-dawson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/FortyFootCloserView-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/tim-dawson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/FortyFootForeshoreMichaelScottHouse-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/tim-dawson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/FortyFootChangeShelter-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n