Moonlight Swim On Monday a friend rang up to ask if I fancied a swim later, after he had entertained some old people with his music. It was rather cold and a little windy, but not wishing to decline and so dampen anyone's enthusiasm for wild swimming I agreed and made a flask of tea. Tea is my new craze, and discovering that it's no effort to make a flask of hot drink, and pop it into my back pack I then went outside and waited for a lift in the dark. We walked along to the lake. This time I used my new wetsuit top (£35 Cornwall) and lay back into the inky black water surprised to find there was none of the usual shock. But in fact felt bouyantly floaty and thought again that perhaps it was safer. It wouldn't be good to slip under in the silent water, this night. We swam over the lake and then along it and discussed the time of moonrise, it being so, he said, one day after full moon. I said that this would mean that 'after-full-moon would mean it rises after-sunset
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No Women in the Mens! Bourne Lido is not your usual lido. It really hasn't altered a lot since it was just a bend in the river that in the summer held back enough water to swim in. And not much changed since when someone poured some cement around it and nailed some corrugated iron on top of some cowsheds for everyone to change in. It's not lane-marked-high-temperature Peterborough, where swimmers steam up and down in silence, but is just a place for kids to mess around and show off, just beside the cricket pitch and separated from the back gardens of the surrounding houses by just a hedge. I could see someone making tea. It's overlooked by the Bourne Abbey Church and sometimes you hear the bells of a wedding going on over there. Rooks circled and croaked over me. In the breeze, swayed a row of sycamores, and now and then today I heard the crack of bat against cricket ball outside on the pitch. "It's 24C today," the boy said as I went in. It seemed
Peterborough Lido 1936 This morning we got up to try the 07.30 pensioners' early swim at the Lido. Changing in the row of empty cubicles and setting clothes down on the benches, we dived into a balmy 28.5C under the watchful gaze of two boys covered with windproof blankets marked Lifeguard. As I swam up and down in silence with about 15 other elderly, rotund swimmers I looked again at the architecture surrounding the blue painted pool and mused about its significance. For it was built in the era of 1936. 1936 was the year of the Berlin Olympics and the movements of 'Health and Beauty' in Britain, and 'Strength Through Joy (Kraft durch Freude)' in Germany. Things were all going swimmingly. Young people were swept up in the fashion of body culture, well-being, and healthy walking in the mountains. Fitness and mixed bathing and a good deal of general reduced-clothing recreation was greatly welcomed at the time. And probably a lot more besides. Even in England
THE REAL THING ! Have you read WATERLOG by Roger Deakin? It's the very Bible for wild swimming disciples, and has a long list of his descriptions of the places where he swam 20 years ago. So finding myself in the Yorkshire Dales yesterday, I decided to drop in on the River Ribble a short walk outside the village of Stainforth. And try the real thing! The sun was shining and great cumulus clumps were skidding across the sky silhouetting dark shadows that raced over nearby Pen y Ghent, pushed by the strong wind. So I had imagined a very blowy chop somewhere on the River Ribble where it's squeezed between wooded canyon walls, creating the famous waterfall and the Eel Pool where one can swim. But it was calm when we walked past the narrow packhorse bridge and along the sheltered footpath, greeted by energised lads holding wet towels who shouted encouragement to us as we passed, and soon we heard the thundering roar of the falls. There, under the waterfall, was a pitch-black poo
Current Affairs When the wind blows the lake is colder. After 5 years I have observed that the wind piles up the warm water at one end where it sinks and picks up the colder water and then reappears at the other end ready to tingle the bather, as he relaxes with a gasp! Today, as opposed to the record 27C in the calm sunshine of last week, the temperature was 17C and as the wind blew along the lake I could feel the weak current moving me backwards, whenever I stopped swimming my gentle slow breaststroke. Furthermore, I could feel that my lower regions were also the same temperature too ...as it had all been mixed up. But that was earlier in the week and today I elected to get up early and go to swim in the sea at Overy Staithe just an hour and fifteen minutes away. Not long, if I were to look sharpish and get there before the crowds started to block the single carriageway A47 to Kings Lynn. After a successful traffic-free trip I drove into Burnham Market even before anything was
There's something about water, and swimming in it, that makes for more than one kind of reflection.So I thought to write down some of the times I go for a swim. It will be a nice record of exhilarating times (to come) and if it gives you fun to see what happened then it's an extra bonus! Read away! MY LAKE I usually swim in my own local lake in the summer. Well, it's not actually mine but for a while as I climb over the fence, past the terrifying signs saying danger 'Deep Cold Water' and walk over to the miniature beach that I keep clear of reeds, it's mine. Behind the dunes of gravel no.one can see me. So it's mine for a time. Only the swan occasionally casts a censorious eye at me as I slip into the shallow, warm, water. There were two swans last year. One, this year, with a baby but they have now gone. There's a moorhen swimming back and forth as if it's lost, and geese in flight high overhead in uncontrolled airspace. Lower down the fli