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Myself and two girlfriends, Sarah and Kate, went to Brittas Bay beach about 40 minutes drive south of Dublin off the main Dublin-Wexford road.

The three of us had been on holidays in Spain a month previously and, of course, we had all gone topless when we were on the beach which was for most of every day. Kate had suggested that we go to Brittas as she said that topless sunbathing more common there than on other beaches in the area. I was skeptical about this as as far I knew, top freedom was rare on Irish beaches with the odd topless girl generally being a continental European. Abroad, however, on European sun holidays certainly over 50% of Irish girls remove their tops.

When we got there it was an extremely hot day which in Ireland we don't get too often. The beach at Brittas is about 4 miles long with super real sand and is surrounded by a 80 foot high sand dunes

We decided first of all to walk the length of the beach before settling down to sun ourselves. The walk took us about 45 minutes and we saw a small amount of topfreedom. Kate said that most of the topfreedom was in the dunes behind us. We went there then and certainly Kate was right. There was a lot of topfreedom and people walking along the dune to find a place to sun themselves and were certainly not put out by topfreedom.

After walking for a few minutes we came across a part of the dunes where there were nine topless girls sunbathing. They were not all together but maybe in 3 or 4 groups, with some guys in some of the groups as well. As Sarah said it looked like we were back in Spain! We then settled down and started sunning ourselves. As people walked by us there was no real obvious gawking and if anything women seemed more surprised than men at the sight of some 12 topless sunbathers.

After a while we got talking to a group of German students beside us who were on holidays touring Ireland. They were four girls and three guys from the same university in Hamburg. Three of the four girls were topless. We chatted away and we felt very comfortable -- its easier to talk to Germans than Irish guys topless as for the Germans its so natural they don't stare at our boobs or make us feel uncomfortable.

Some time later we all decided to go from a swim. We started to put our tops back on as the German girls just got up and looked a little surprised to see us covering up. We then explained that whilst there was some topless sunbathing we had not seen any body go swimming topless. We all laughed at this and whilst one of the German girls put her top on, two of them decided to leave it off. As we walked to and from the water, there were some stares from men and women alike.

When we arrived back to the sand dunes the Germans again showed their inhibitions. Instead of performing the 'beach towel tango' whilst changing their swimsuits they just simply removed the wet one , dried themselves and put on a dry suit all without using a towel. I did this as well as did Kate. It all seemed so natural.

We had a lovely they at the beach and we will go back for all other nice days

--Mary, Dublin, Ireland