Well done to Aisling Barry and Marie Watson for organising the Vampire Swim on Saturday and making a party day of it.  With 75 swimmers, over €1,000 was raised and lots of blood was donated. Looks like ours was the largest of the worldwide swims – is there nothing we can’t do? 🙂

Vampire Swim: Myrtleville, Cork, Ireland: 31 October, 2015; 75 swimmers.

Fantastic efforts went in to the costumes and thanks to Katie Hill and Rob for their professional work on the makeup.  A great day and hopefully a new annual event.  It was a party to remember.

Organisers Aisling and Marie had, of course, to contend with the usual problems when you organise a children’s party – like people wanting to know if there was a party-bag if they swam and then thinking about it when they saw what was in the bag…

Jim Shalloo gives some thought to his party bag while Aisling and Marie wait patiently for him to decide if he’s swimming or not.

Others got totally overexcited and didn’t know what was happening – the poor fella on the right here was new to the sea and was gabbling about it being the biggest pool he ever saw and what were those white things on top of it and where were the black lines and could you tumble turn on that rock and and and…the Cashell sisters and Jim (with party bag secured) just humoured him.  It’s the best way with smallies when they’re wound up.

There was fantastic food for everyone and thanks to the Lowry family for the marquee etc. For some, getting their teeth into a hot dog was the main attraction.

For others, getting teeth into an Audrey was more attractive…looks like she doesn’t mind.

As ever, thanks to Siobhan Russell for the great pictures. Well done to everyone.