I know wild swimming/cold water swimming/sea swimming/whatever your preferred term might be has become the outdoor activity du jour. Women up and down the country, and indeed all over the world, are taking off their dryrobes and taking to the sea, or the river or the lake or whatever bit of untamed water they have handy. And I did it too in the summer of 2022. Not because I felt like it was good for either my body or my mind, not because everyone else was doing it, not because it was easier or more convenient or more natural than a swimming pool – but because I knew that if I was going to make any progress on the long journey towards being a kayak instructor, I was going to have to get at least tolerant to capsizing on the open sea and to do that, I had to stop being terrified of the sea.
I don’t like cold water. This is inconvenient for someone on a kayaking journey but I don’t. I love hot water. I could move to Iceland just so I could go to their outdoor geothermal pools every day. A bath is a necessity. I swim in pools. But sooner or later I was going to need to learn to capsize and that meant leaving the security of the kayak and ending up in the water.
So I joined the Bluetits. They’re a cold water swimming club which has local groups all over the country and a lot of the rest of the world. They’d know what there was to know about the sea, which is far better and safer than just jumping in by yourself. I started in my wetsuit. I know some wild swimmers are a bit snooty about what you wear but my local flock were pretty non-judgemental, on the whole. My first few swims were at Studland, where I usually paddle. It’s very shallow and pretty sheltered so sometimes you had to wade quite a long way out before it got deep enough to take your feet off the bottom.
I was kind of reluctant to do that. As long as I was standing, I was more or less in control of which bits of me got wet. Once I was up, I was at the mercy of the water. Actually, for me, getting my hands and arms in was the hard bit and once I could no longer hold them above my head, I was generally OK. I soon invested in some neoprene gloves and they definitely helped.
I was interested to discover how hard it was to swim wearing a wetsuit and neoprene socks. The summer of 2023 got a bit busy but the three summer’s before that, I’d been swimming a mile twice a week in my local lido, dressed for a pool. I hated getting in the cold water but I was confident about my swimming. I started swimming before I could walk! And yet clad in neoprene, the wrong bits of me became buoyant in a way I wasn’t used to and everything was in the wrong place for the movement I was so accustomed to. I wanted the warmth and I liked that little feeling of extra security in that I couldn’t help but float but I never mastered swimming in a wetsuit.
My third swim was a bit of an anomaly. I went to London one weekend (brought COVID back) and while I was up there, I had a swim in the ladies’ pond on Hampstead Heath – or maybe the mixed one? I can’t remember now. Oh, that’s a baptism of fire, or maybe ice. When you swim in the sea at Studland, you walk in and gradually it gets deeper as you go further out. Here, there’s a platform and a ladder and the water is so murky you have literally no idea how deep it is. You’re either in or out.
I know that my lungs panic in cold water. I’ve not yet mastered it but I know it happens and I plan accordingly. So I climbed in, clung to the ladder as long as possible, then clung to the pioe on the underside of the platform until I could breathe properly. I also don’t like deep water. Instagram occasionally shows me the mega-deep pool in Dubai where astronauts train and I can’t look. I had no idea how deep the pond was, only that a casual stretch didn’t reveal anything that felt like it might be the bottom. So I doggy-paddled out to one of the buoys that would serve as tables if they weren’t in the water. Not holding on, not stopping, swimming away from the ladder, trying not to think about the fathoms below me.
Studland a few weeks later was a positive delight!
By my sixth swim, I’d shed the wetsuit – also in London, because it’s not really practical to carry a wet wetsuit on the Tube. By the seventh, I was going on my own. I camped in Cornwall – maybe glamped? – and I discovered it was only an hour or so to Bude, which has a sea pool. That was an adventure! That first evening it was high tide and waves crashed over the concrete wall, making it rough and yet somewhat protected in the deep end. I went back the next day when it was low tide, in the wetsuit. That felt a lot less “wild”. It really was just a pool, albeit a salty one on a beach. As is often the case on that stretch of coast, the difference in tides can be huge and the beach at low tide is enormous.
Then I swam with Catherine and her local Bluetits. They’re a much bigger flock and their bit of sea is at the bottom of a steep shingle beach, which makes changing afterwards less messy than changing on sand. It gets deeper faster and the waves are bouncier. I’d probably be a lot more wary here but with Catherine, I have less opportunity to go really slowly, trying to keep my arms dry. I was interested to discover that it doesn’t bother Catherine to put her arms in the water but her bad moment is in the legs.
Then I had two swims in the sea pool at Weston-super-Mare. Now, that was interesting. At low tide, you can walk halfway out while sticky mud pulls at your feet. Fine. I could wade out, swim at sunset, wash off my neoprene socks. But the next day I was there just before high tide. I’d noticed the water pouring over the wall. I noticed the water level getting higher. I realised my dry clothes, on a bench on the walkway, were getting threatened. So I fetched them and scrambled to the prom above the walkway and I swear, in less than ten minutes, the walkway had vanished and the last people to still walk on it were up to their waists. Weston, you are petrifying!
I didn’t learn to like cold water or swimming in the sea. I learned to tolerate them on good days. But that’s a step forward! In the summer of 2023, though, I joined boat club and was back at both Rangers and Brownies. Even my regular pool swims went a bit out the window and I think I only managed one sea swim that entire summer. Maybe I’ll see if I can get half a dozen swims in this summer. We’ll see.
Bumblebee Paddles 