Quite the compliment…
Many people in the country claim it as Ireland’s most famous swimming spot, and in Dublin there’s no debate, and it seems to the New York Times, there’s no debate either.
The Forty Foot, a historic bathing pool at the southern tip of Dublin Bay, has been named among the best places to swim in the world by the NYT.
Once a male only swimming spot, The Forty Foot near Dún Laoghaire in South Dublin is now open to everyone young and old to swim there.
It was made famous by James Joyce’s Ulysses, when the character of Buck Mulligan took a dip in the water.
While in the article, which you can read in full here, The Forty Foot is listed as number one, the article states that the spots are in no particular order.
In a piece entitled, The 10 Best Places to Swim in the World, According to Me, the NYT writer Loudon Wainwright III describes why the The Forty Foot had such an impact on him.
The 40 Foot [sic]. In Sandycove, just south of central Dublin. The first section of “Ulysses” ends with Buck Mulligan taking a dip there, plunging into “the scrotum-tightening sea.” Originally a men’s-only nude bathing spot, it is now frequented by swim-suited crazies of both sexes. I’ve been going to the 40 Foot for about 30 years, and it’s always really cold. It’s not really a swim, as such, but rather an in-and-out experience, often punctuated by a bloodcurdling scream upon submersion.
We can’t argue with any of that as the reaction of most people when they jump in is shock followed up with a shaky, “That’s fu*king freezin'”.
If the name Loudon Wainwright III sounds familiar, you’re not going crazy, he’s an American singer songwriter and father to musicians Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright, and Lucy Wainwright Roche.
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