Winter Waves, brave souls

By Sarah Lyall

BUNDORAN, Ireland -- It was a typical late-winter day on the Irish coast, no worse than usual. Bands of black clouds sailed ominously across the sky. Rain bucketed down in freezing torrents. Icy winds pummeled and churned the ocean.

Joanne Fulton sat in her wet suit with a group of friends in a van in the parking lot above the beach, ashen and shivering.

This is après-surf, Irish style, and the whole enterprise has a unique and subtle appeal. "It is very, very cold," Ms. Fulton observed. "But once you get in, the wet suit keeps you warm. Although my hands actually have no feeling. Or my face and feet."

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