The festive season brings with it many traditions, turkey and stuffing, holly and ivy, Santa and Rudolph and of course, best of all, stripping down to your trunks and getting jumping into a freezing cold sea for charity.
This year there are some absolute belters, and the various charities which benefit from them, need your support more than ever.
WALRUS BOXING DAY DIP AT PEMBREY COUNTRY PARK
Brave the chill and join in with the 35th annual Walrus Dip at Pembrey Country Park!
Join hundreds of others and take a dip in the sea on Boxing Day to raise money for a cause close to your heart, but if you’re not brave enough come along anyway to witness this crazy and spectacular event!
The Walrus Dip was established in 1984, and has run every year since, except on two occasions – one due to an oil spill another when the sea froze over! People of all ages take part for a variety of charities, with most donning fancy dress and colourful Christmas costumes.
Participants and spectators should arrive at the park by 10.30am latest, and be at the starting line by 10.45am (due to tidal conditions there is likely to be a 10-minute walk to the start line from the main entrance to Cefn Sidan sands). – the amount of time you spend in the sea is entirely up to you! The event is supported by the RNLI and Coastguard who will both be on duty throughout the event.
Participation is free and certificates will be handed out to all participants. Admission to Pembrey Country Park is free. For more details on the Walrus Dip. just go HERE.
* The event will only be cancelled in case of extreme weather conditions that would threaten the safety of participants and spectators, or in event of an emergency. Keep an eye on our Facebook and Twitter pages for information on the day
PONTYPRIDD LIDO BOXING DAY SWIM
After a rollercoaster year of early morning swims in all weathers, family fun in the sun, and exciting new cold water sessions, Lido Ponty is wrapping up 2022 the traditional way – with a Boxing Day Swim.
Cllr Ann Crimmings, Rhondda Cynon Taf Council’s Cabinet Member for Environment and Leisure told us…..
“Boxing Day and New Year’s Day swims are the final events in the Lido Ponty calendar before we close down to get ready to do it all again at Easter time – and we cannot wait!
Over 113,000 people visited Lido Ponty in 2022, and we have loved welcoming each and every one of them to our beautiful attraction – rain and shine!
The cold water swim sessions were introduced as a trial and, with water temperatures dropping to 15 degrees in winter, we were not sure how these would go, but we were delighted so many people visited from near and far to get involved.
Boxing Day and New Year’s Day are the last sessions to get your Lido Ponty fix for a while, so make sure you get your tickets.”
Boxing Day swim tickets are available now at £7, including a hot chocolate at the end of your session. Under fives swim free. Please bring your own Christmas hats – they’d love to share them on their socials.
New Year’s Day swims go on sale 9am Monday, December 12th. Tickets are £6 (no drink provided) and, again, under fives go free.
More details and to book your tickets, go HERE.
PORTHCAWL CHRISTMAS MORNING SWIM
They are back this year and it’s time to paint the town red – we say, make our bodies blue with the cold.
The organisers are delighted to announce that the 57th Christmas Morning Swim will be going ahead this year. They ask you all to join them and Paint the Town Red to celebrate whilst also marking 20 years of their headline charity Wales Air Ambulance.
Wales Air Ambulance covers the whole of Wales every single day. Each year their helicopters attend around 2,500 missions, covering rural countryside and our bustling towns and cities. This includes the length of our Welsh coastline and across our vast mountain ranges. Their four airbase operations in Caernarfon, Llanelli, Welshpool and Cardiff are ready to saves lives wherever needed.
Find out more about Wales Air Ambulance Service HERE.
The Porthcawl Christmas Morning swim, is (unsurprisingly) on Christmas Morning. They have just announced its return, so details are slowly coming in. Take a look at their FACEBOOK page, or you can email them christmasswim@gmail.com
BARRY ISLAND NEW YEAR’S DAY SWIM
Like many great ideas, this one began in a pub. Back in 1984, five members of the Jackson’s Bay Lifeguard Club vowed to go for a dip the morning after their New Year’s Eve celebrations. What’s more, they set a rule that they had to totally submerge themselves three times. This remains the gold standard, but many of today’s swimmers choose to run into the sea, have a very short splash and get the heck out of there screaming and yelling. That would be us too.
The annual Barry Island New Years Day dip has become one of the Vale’s fastest growing and most popular events with people travelling from all over to participate. They hope they can continue to grow this wonderful event, whilst raising invaluable funds to support and care for the children and their families.
At this point there’s still no announcement as to whether the event is going ahead, but our team are on the case and we’ll bring you details as soon as we hear.
The New Year’s Day dip gets usually get underway at 12.30pm on Whitmore Bay For more details, go here. BARRY
MAYORS NEW YEAR’S DAY DIP IN PEMBROKESHIRE
Newport Boat Club in Pembrokeshire is the place to be if you want to blow off the New Years Eve excesses. your host for this chilly dip into the estuary at Parrog (and yes, the mayor really does take part). Mercifully, it’s just a short dash back up the slipway for a mug of soup and a hot shower in the Boat Club.
The New Year’s Day Dip is obviously on the 1st January 2023 – 2:30pm at high tide – followed by hot soup and hot showers at the Club. Start the New Year with a bracing swim!
It gets underway at noon at Newport Boat Club in Parrog. Not many details as yet but as soon as we get more, we’ll let you know. In the meantime, go HERE.
SAUNDERSFOOT NEW YEAR’S DAY SWIM
This charitable event just gets bigger and better and quite frankly more elaborate year on year. Thousands now take part in this event with as many, if not more supporting and enjoying the spectacle.
After a two year hiatus, the Saundersfoot New Year’s Day Swim is back for NYDS2023! Organisers have already met and plans are well underway. Martyn Williams, Chairman of the NYDS said……..
“The swim is an integral part of the village calendar and so important to local and national charitable causes. We were as disappointed as anyone for the last two swims to be cancelled. We are all excited to return in 2023!“
The 2023 swim will be the village’s 37th and over recent years the swim has gone from strength to strength raising thousands and thousands of pounds for charitable and worthy causes. The 2023 event is eagerly awaited following the Covid-enforced cancellation of the last two swims. The last swim was in 2020 which attracted over 2000 swimmers, generating over £48,000.
The crowds are entertained by the Cold Cup (a fancy-dress horse race over obstacles for local pub teams), fireworks and a mass dance warm-up. Last year’s fancy dress included a team of warriors who arrived on the beach inside a giant wooden Trojan Horse. As for the swim, the rules clearly state: ‘Your head must go under!
This really is a massive fun day for the whole family and this year they have Great British Bake Off contestant Michelle Evans-Fecci starting the swim off in style.
The shirts are a big thing for this event, in fact, take a look at their website and you’ll see why and who has been wearing them over the years. The last New Year’s Day swim had a friend of South Wales Life, GBBO’s Michelle Evans-Fecci sporting hers. To see who else has worn a Swim Day shirt, go HERE.
We understand the event will begin an hour earlier than normal, with the swim starting at 12 noon. Take a look at their website to find out more – SAUNDERSFOOT
TENBY BOXING DAY SWIM
Named as one of Britain’s top ten barmiest winter dips, TENBY’s famous Boxing Day Swim has been an institution in the small West Wales town for decades and has recently featured in the ITV Wales series The Harbour, which was filmed in Tenby and shows a year in the life of the seaside community.
The Tenby Boxing Day Swim is organised by the Tenby Sea Swimming Association, which also stages the summertime Caldey Swim from the monastic island to the Tenby mainland.
The two events have enabled TSSA to raise nearly £300,000 for local, national and international charities and good causes over the years.
The 2019 Tenby Boxing Day Swim saw a record-breaking entry of nearly 800 dippers who took the plunge in the sunshine and numbers remain strong and consistent for this year’s festivities.
Swimmers can collect for their own good causes or the charities nominated by TSSA.
The legendary event has been absent from the Christmas scene for two years because of the Covid pandemic, with last year’s Welsh Government regulations scuppering it with just seven days’ notice.
But this year, the fundraising swim will be back in style as it celebrates its 50th anniversary.
It first took to the water in 1970 with just a handful of people as an out-of-season publicity stunt.
Over the years it has snowballed into one of Wales’ top festive attractions and is ranked in the top 10 of Britain’s barmiest seasonal swims.
The 50th Tenby Boxing Day Swim takes place on the North Beach on Sunday, December 26th from 11am.
The stampede for the sea is signalled at 11.30am, and swimmers can look forward to the warmth of the beach bonfire and hot soup on their return to the beach.
To find out more about the brilliant, historic event, and to get yourself signed up, just go HERE.
