Tenby Boxing Day Swim

Hundreds of barmy bathers have splashed out in balmy weather conditions to make the Tenby Boxing Day Swim

News

FUNDRAISERS RULE THE WAVES

2018 Theme: Space Travel

OVER £9,600 was raised for charities and good causes in 2017, thanks to the Tenby Sea Swimming Association’s two events. The summer’s Caldey Swim raised £3,000 for the RNLI., and the Tenby Boxing Day Swim brought in £3,694 for a variety of local, national and international charities. TSSA’s three nominated charities from the swim – Bloodwise, Hafal and the Stroke Association – each received £500, while there were donations of £50 each for the event’s safety cover providers, St John Ambulance, Tenby coastguard, Tenby Surflink and Pembrokeshire Paddlers, together with Tenby Sea Cadets, who led the beach bonfire builders. Topping the individual fundraisers was Stephanie James of Cardiff, who collected £1,038 for the Motor Neurone Disease charity, while for the fourth year in succession, the fundraising group leaders were Skanda Vale. The tuneful ‘pirates’ from Skanda Vale’s monastery and hospice, near Llandysul, were an entertaining spectacle on the beach on Boxing Day. The motley crew raised £528.57 for Skanda Vale’s new six-bedroomed hospice, which is the only in-patient facility of its kind for Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion.

About the Swim

SPLASH OUT TO BE A PART OF THE ACTION IN TENBY’S BARMY BOXING DAY SWIM!

TENBY’s famous Boxing Day Swim will be splashing out from the resort’s North Beach for the 47^th time this Christmas. Ranked amongst the festive highlights of Wales, the charity event has also been named as one of Britain’s top ten barmiest winter dips. It 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 £270,000 for local, national and international charities and good causes over the years.

The 2016 Tenby Boxing Day Swim saw a record-breaking entry of over 700 dippers who took the plunge in the sunshine.

Swimmers can collect for their own good causes or the charities nominated by TSSA.

The 2017 charities will be announced soon.

The 47^th Tenby Boxing Day Swim takes place on the North Beach on Tuesday December 26^th 2017.

Fun on the beach starts at 11am with a canoe race, crazy raft race and fancy dress parade.

The stampede for the sea is signalled at 11.30am, and swimmers can look forward to the warmth of the beach bonfire, hot soup and a commemorative medal on their return to the beach.

History

FESTIVE FUNDRAISER HAS FAMILY TRADITIONS

The Tenby Boxing Day Swim has been a part of the town’s Christmas festivities for nearly five decades.
But the origins of its parent organisation, the Tenby Sea Swimming Association, date back for more than a century.
In 1910, Arthur Dickinson – Quaker, lay preacher, artist and keen swimmer – brought his family from Yorkshire to live in Ruabon House, South Parade. Arthur was a year-round swimmer, and family legend has it that he was the first person to swim to Caldey. The harness he made to support youngsters in the water is now in Tenby Museum.
His son-in-law, Ossie Morgan, who was appointed as headmaster of the Tenby Council School, carried on the family tradition of teaching children to swim. When Mr Morgan retired, his own offspring decided to get non-swimmers afloat, and in the 1960s, Idris Morgan, Gly Osborne, Alan Morgan and Ray Lowe formed the Tenby Sea Swimming Association (TSSA).
They sponsored and provided accommodation for some instructors from Atlantic College during the summer, finishing with a modest swimming gala.
The opening of Tenby’s first indoor swimming pool could have spelled the end of TSSA, but the organisation then took on a new lease of life in 1970 when Tenby’s publicity officer, John Evans, came up with the idea of a charity Boxing Day Swim to put Tenby on the map.
The rest, as they say, is history……