Forget undercover reporting. ROSITA BOLANDhit Sligo’s Dunmoran Strand yesterday, for a journalistic assignment with a difference: the ‘Dip in the Nip’ charity swim

THE SECOND annual Dip in the Nip, in aid of the Irish Cancer Society, took place on Dunmoran Strand in Sligo yesterday morning. Last year, 180 women took part, and €56,000 was raised. This year, the event was open to men too, and from early morning, more than 200 people made their way along the winding back roads from Ballysadare, following the pink balloons tied to signposts along the way.

I was one of them, driving there with just the tiniest level of trepidation.

Is it possible to report properly on an event where everyone gets naked without doing the same yourself? It might be, but I had decided I was going to join in anyway. Just call it, oh dear, immersion journalism.

Dunmoran Strand is a glorious picture-postcard secluded beach; long, curved and sandy. Dippers, as participants are called, had received a text with location instructions the previous evening. Last year, the dip was at Lissadell.

Dippers in dressing gowns and wrapped in towels mustered on the wind-swept beach before 11am, women far outnumbering the men. The men were at the far end of the strand, and male stragglers arriving late were heckled merrily by the women they had to pass in front of. Who knew there were so many men called David Hasselhoff in Ireland?

The women may have been going into the water, but that doesn’t mean they were wearing nothing: feather boas, pink gloves, tiaras, pink hair ribbons and bows, and huge earrings were everywhere. If you disregarded the beach beyond, it could have been a very large hen party.

Among those waiting for the signal to disrobe were friends Deirdre Gillan, Lorraine Harte from Sligo and Susan Graffin from Antrim. They had raised more than €1,600 between them. “I work in a flower shop. I make a lot of wreaths,” Harte explained. “I see the effects of cancer every day. Every day, someone is being buried.”

“Everyone is Ireland knows someone who has been affected by cancer,” Gillan stated.

“We’re doing this to raise money, and also because it’s something you’ll look back on in 50 years when you’re in a nursing home, and you’ll say: ‘I did that’,” Harte laughed.

Geraldine Daly from Boyle, Co Roscommon, was participating because her husband died two years ago of bowel cancer. “He was only 53,” she revealed quietly.

Everywhere, there were stories.

Maura Duignan from Leitrim, was doing the dip for the memory of her aunt, Vera Garvey, who died of breast cancer recently. “I’ll have some natural buoyancy in the water,” she said, smiling. That would be because she was seven months pregnant.

One of the men present was Kevin Dorrian, from Fanad in Co Donegal. By yesterday, he estimated he had raised €1,500. He was there to honour his aunt, who was diagnosed with breast cancer three years ago, and who has since died.

ONE OF THE LAST women to come down onto the beach was Carol Wilson. She was slower than most of us, as she was on beribboned crutches due to a recent knee replacement. Why was she there? “I’m doing this for my mother,” she explained. “She has breast cancer, and today is her 90th birthday. This is for her.”

I’m afraid I didn’t find out where the brave and spirited Carol was from, because Terry Wogan was counting us into the water live on air from his radio show in London at that point in our conversation. Besides, I had left my notebook back down the beach with my sandals. For the record, I felt more naked without the notebook than without my clothes.

On the count of three, everyone – women at one end and men at the other – flung aside their wraps and hurtled towards the surf. Gasp. I think it was cold in the water. It must have been. Isn’t it always, in the Atlantic? To be honest, I can’t really remember. Perhaps I was simply numb. The adrenaline propelled us all forwards anyway, despite the temperature. It was definitely wet. Once everyone was in – fully in, I’ll have you know, no paddling – a spontaneous round of applause went up among us.

I don’t know what it was like down the men’s end, but I do know they all scarpered out of the water long before their hardier female counterparts, much to our entertainment.

Down our end, everyone was laughing. And everyone was equal in the ocean, whether they were women with two breasts, women missing one breast or both, women with more of a stomach than they might like; all united in their display of scars, stomachs, and proudly exposed imperfect bodies. It was exhilarating, those shared moments of grace and pure fun; a powerful and lovely collective carpe diem on Dunmoran Strand yesterday in Sligo.