How Do You Like Your Beaches?

I have to wonder why I seek out cold Irish beaches so happily.

The beach at Howth, north of the city. The rain had been falling for half an hour.

The streak of beautiful weather here in Dublin ended this week with the first of what will be many, many blustery days coated with rain under overcast skies. I’d enjoyed eleven brilliant days of warm sunlight given by this notoriously stormy island, a gracious welcome mat for my first days (if I can be a little self-centered). Thursday morning woke me with raindrops on my windows, like a notice for the end of the grace period. “You’ll miss the sun,” an earnest Irish stranger warned me on the bus.

But I will still comb the eastern Irish beaches. Those day trips will continue regardless of how unpleasant the weather, because I haven’t quite found any other beaches like them. And I’m lucky enough to have some quality beach experience: Mexico, Jamaica, Florida, Texas, and North Carolina. The waters have varied from stunning greens to lovely blues, the sands sometimes approaching you-can’t-believe-it’s-not-bleached white and always fine enough to let your family bury you up to the neck. People seek out these premier beaches from across the globe for their beauty, warmth, and picturesque atmospheres.

Eastern Irish beaches have very few of these things at this time of year. With luck you might get sunshine overhead if the clouds take a smoke break from their twenty-four-hour watch. Even then, the combination of water and wind might convince you to add a thermal coat rather than swim. Lace up your boots tightly, as the sand might be fine-grained but will more likely be pebbles instead. Around you the beach might be enclosed by cliffs dropping abruptly into the sea, so that you’re kept in something like a shoe box. And yet I love these beaches which I keep finding. Why?

It’s the attitude. At home we overlay the beach with romanticism, with “summer vibes,” with endless preening for social media (I’m guilty of it also). But none of the beachgoers here bring any pretensions to the water, and so the landscape appears frank and authentic. Yes, beached jellyfish here are large and discolored like piled intestines. Yes, the rocks of the shoreline are covered by objects Instagram doesn’t prefer, like slick brown weeds and dogged barnacles. But the nature displays itself openly, and none of the Irish authorities seem concerned with concealing anything to make the beach a “destination” location.

The beachgoers I’ve seen here act accordingly. They’ve mostly been middle-aged or older, often standing around in their street clothes ahead of the swim. For that they don nondescript swimsuits and water shoes. Their beach trips center around the swim itself. Not many people want to lay out on the sand, with the wind blowing in so coldly and the sun abandoning everything so readily. These hardy swimmers paddle out into the frigid water and they stay out in the tide until they’re satisfied. All while I shiver, dig my hands deeper into my pockets, and fit my chin down into my collarbone like a ruffled tropical bird. I’ve yet to overhear a complaint about the water. I happily broadcast the low temperatures back home: Yes, I'm at the beach, but there's no need to be jealous because the water is basically Arctic. Not that it’s that cold, but you have to exaggerate when writing in text or italics. But swimmers here have no qualms, and without those they can plunge right in. Bare-minimum expectations let them make the most of what is available. Which, now being spelled out, shouldn’t be such an astonishing concept to me.

I will swim out there one of these days. I’ve told that to some friends both here and back home, and with this post, the swim absolutely has to happen if I ever plan to show my face in public again. Though “swim” is a brave word. My wiser side—the one being dragged into this mess—already knows how the scene will play out. I’ll remove too many layers, shriek when my foot submerges for the first time, throw myself down under the surface, and rush back onto the beach without my feet leaving the seafloor. The subsequent photo will capture my brush with oncoming pneumonia, the gooseflesh as visible as craters on the skin. But it’ll be worthwhile to stubbornly honor my pledge to people whose opinions likely won’t be altered. Or, more seriously, it’ll feel monumental to fully enjoy the beaches that I’ve come to admire, in the way that best embraces them.