The bright, if somewhat chilly weather, attracted a huge crowd to the Martello, where registration and changing facilities were operating and where the swimmers enjoyed the hospitality of the hotel with well-needed food and warm beverages after the dip. <\/p>\n
A feature of Bray New Year celebrations since 1984, the annual swim has already raised more than \u20ac400,000 for local causes and the 2026 event will add another significant amount to that total.<\/p>\n
So far, the online donations have surpassed the \u20ac7,000 target by a couple of hundred euro, and with the lines still open and money raised on the day still to be tallied, that figure should be well exceeded. <\/p>\n
Bray Lions President Irene Milner thanked all those who helped make the swim an outstanding success again this year, including volunteers, lifeguards, Order of Malta and the three organisations chosen this year who will benefit from the swim \u2013 Cabhair Mental Health Service, Wicklow Dementia Support and Ark Housing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe worked very closely with these organisations who helped us recruit swimmers, raise funds and assist with the event on New Year\u2019s Day,\u201d Irene said.<\/p>\n
“We believe that the funds raised this year were substantially higher than in 2025.<\/p>\n
“We will announce the final figure over the next few weeks once final sponsorship donations have been received.\u201d<\/p>\n
Irene thanked the management and staff at The Martello, where changing facilities and post-swim hospitality were provided, and the the team of Bray Lions who were engaged in registration, stewarding, communications, safety services and a bucket collection on the seafront. <\/p>\n
And of course, a huge thanks went out to all those who braved the waves on a day that saw the water temperature recorded at a low of 8.5\u00b0C by the Dublin Bay Buoy, with some regulars who took the plunge remarking the sea was the coldest they had experienced for the big swim. <\/p>\n
As always, many chose to make it novelty affair and take the plunge in fancy dress and colourful onesies, with the Grinch leading the way this year as the standout alongside elves, Santa, a motley crew dressed as seagulls and, for the season that\u2019s in it, a gaggle of Christmas turkeys.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The bright, if somewhat chilly weather, attracted a huge crowd to the Martello, where registration and changing facilities…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223720,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,10687,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-223719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-tom-galvin","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}