by Joe Minihane
The blackboard as I emerged from the changing rooms read 15°C. I pinged on a pair of scratched goggles I’d been forced to borrow from reception, having left my own at home, and stepped into the shallow end. Parliament Hill Lido had had a spruce-up since Roger’s visit, the main tank replaced in 2005 and now absurdly shallow at one end. The water barely kissed my knees as I leant down and splashed my head to get a feel for the cold. I was the only one in the water, a few fellow swimmers sitting along the sides, splashing their feet, and the odd sunbather getting to work on their tan in the first of the summer sun. I worked myself into a freestyle stroke, literally crawling along the bottom for ten metres before the water buoyed me up and on towards the deep end.
With no one else in the pool, I settled quickly into a Zen-like state. Roger was lucky enough to experience the same solo joy as me. ‘The absence of wavelets, or other bathers, means you can move in perfect rhythm, so the music takes over,’ he wrote. ‘Mind and body go off somewhere together in unselfconscious bliss, and the lengths seem to swim themselves. The blood sings, the water yields; you are in a state of grace, and every breath gets deeper and more satisfying.’
I was fully blissed out by the time I turned and pushed off back towards the shallows. Even the disappearance of the sun behind a huge grey cloud and the swift drop in air temperature couldn’t deter me. I could only liken it to yoga – something I’d dabbled in while on holiday in Thailand and enjoyed immensely, though never followed up – where breathing is the only permanent thing. There was a rhythm to this swim that I had never experienced before, and I swam on and on, my muscles crying out for relief after one particularly speedy lap. That state of grace Roger talked about? This was it. It was harder to find when battling waves on a North Sea beach or trying to ignore the attentions of mute swans on a Cotswold river. But in an empty lido at the start of summer it was a feeling that could be easily accessed as long as you swam hard and let your breathing take up the slack.
Stepping out and onto the cold concrete, I dried myself off frantically, desperate to prevent a repeat of the previous week’s chattering after our icy Highgate experience. It worked up to a point, aided by the indulgence of a warm shower in the ramshackle changing block. I was still utterly dazed by my experience when I eased my bike through the car park and out past Gospel Oak station. I was so high that I was unfit to be riding through busy north London streets. The rhythm of my pedals mirrored the whirling of my arms in the water and soon I was zipping down Haverstock Hill at lightning pace, letting out a hoot of joy at the sheer brilliance of the day.
The sun was going to my head and I was almost manic as I cycled past Regent’s Park and on towards the centre of town. I’d become an obsessive outdoor swimmer. Cold water had replenished me, and with the heat rising, I was finding the momentum to get this journey moving quicker. Work, deadlines, that need to feel responsible for everything: all of these things were falling by the wayside now I knew there were countless stretches of cold water to throw myself into. Excitement was replacing anxiety, and my swimming journey, which felt as if it had taken forever to get going, was finally in full swing and doing what it was supposed to do. It was curing my worries, giving me a sense of lightness I had rarely enjoyed. Perhaps it wasn’t a sticking plaster after all.
A few days later the early summer sun had gone and a chill returned to London. I fancied a trip to Brockwell, but Keeley wasn’t so keen on the cold water of a lido on a cold spring day. So instead we settled on a trip to Ironmonger Row Baths. These facilities are one of east London’s finest examples of Victorian benevolence: a place to cleanse body, soul and clothes for the working people of the city.
The idea of a ‘steam up’ was definitely appealing as low clouds broke and began spitting rain on us as we made the short walk from Old Street Tube to the baths. Roger’s talk of off-duty cabbies sharing stories in misty steam rooms deep below the streets had me excited for an old-style London experience. The Porchester Spa in Bayswater has this untouched ambience: plastic recliners, a deep pool and tatty magazines for reading after being scorched in the sauna. I fancied this would be a similar deal.
Rounding the corner it became clear that things had changed at Ironmonger Row. Significantly. The facade had been spruced up and inside was a swanky leisure centre. This once proud local space was now very fancy and run by the same people behind the revamped Marshall Street Baths. We enquired about the spa and were sent downstairs into a wood-panelled waiting room reminiscent of the worst kind of soulless relaxation area in a fancy hotel basement.
‘Have you booked?’ asked a rather bolshy attendant, chewing gum and looking into the middle distance somewhere over our shoulders.
‘Er, no.’
‘You need to book online. There ain’t no places left this weekend.’
We exchanged a glance and headed back out into the cold. We hadn’t even managed a swim in the baths’ smart new pool to at least make us feel like we’d earned a heavy evening meal.
Back at home, we fired up the baths’ website. And there it was, the price writ large across the home page: £25 per person, £18.75 for members. If the atmosphere had suggested that things had changed at the baths and spa built to serve local workers, then this confirmed it.
There was no doubt in my then furious mind that this was a clear attempt at attracting tired office workers from the Square Mile’s skyscrapers, as well as the affluent young things who patrolled the streets of east London, while shutting out those who’d lived nearby for generations. Those from the estate north of Ironmonger Row were clearly not welcome in the underground spa. Twenty-five pounds is a huge sum if you’re struggling to make ends meet. It seemed a spa was an indulgence that no normal working person should be afforded.
I grabbed my copy of Waterlog from the shelf as Keeley filled in our bank details and booked a session for a week’s time. I remembered Roger writing about the people he could just make out through the steam. One passage in particular had struck me:
‘Most of the people who come to Ironmonger Row do so regularly, simply because, for a few pounds, the experience gives them an enormous amount of pleasure,’ he wrote. ‘They are what Josie in Steaming [a play by Nell Dunn inspired by Ironmonger Row] calls “the ordinary men and women who have been coming to these baths all their lives, for a swim or a laundry”’.
Defining ‘a few pounds’ in early twenty-first century Britain, and London in particular, isn’t easy. To me, a few quid was what you pay for a pint. Perhaps for those who worked in the City, that’s what £25 represented. My anger swelled and I grew increasingly cynical about what Ironmonger Row had become. All this, of course, without actually stripping down to my shorts and going deep into the bowels of the spa itself.
That £25 hole in our bank account niggled me all week. It wasn’t as if I couldn’t afford it, but the principle of the matter led me to question who was profiting from these enterprises. Why does it cost more than £6 to swim at Tooting Lido? And a fiver at Parliament Hill? Is it because as wild swimming, swimming outdoors – whatever you want to call it – grows in popularity, it becomes an obvious target for those looking to cash in? Maybe.
Certainly that was what had happened to leisure centres across the UK. The sense of social cleansing, of keeping out the great unwashed, was there at every turn in places run on behalf of or instead of local councils. High prices and monthly membership fees abounded. It felt like another example of how our country has become a profit-making tool for a small elite.
I raged about this at Keeley as the following Saturday came around and once again we walked through damp, drizzly streets to Ironmonger Row. She nodded, but being a person who’ll take any opportunity to be steamed and scoured, she was happy to wear the £25 cost. She knew that the equivalent, fancier joints in the centre of town cost four or five times as much, something which I’d failed to factor in as I grumbled.
Presented with a robe and slippers, we were ushered into separate changing areas, where I struggled with
a magnetic key for the lockers, requiring the help of two members of staff to stash my belongings. I emerged into the communal area beyond feeling harried, ready to spend some time lying down and doing not much at all while the steam worked its magic. I was missing the simple joy of throwing myself into a pond, lake or lido. This all seemed a little too fussy to me compared with the basic joys of a wild swim.
The first thing that greeted me was a distinct whiff of effluent as a cleaner opened a hidden door and shoved away a broom. Hardly the ideal start. I tried to get past this initial disappointment and found Keeley lolling on a lounger reading a fashion magazine. Her short brown hair was tied in a small ponytail. Her blue eyes sparkled with excitement.
‘Ready?’ she asked, before bustling purposefully past a group of refuseniks in the plunge pool and into the closest steam room. I could just make out the shape of one man in the corner, curled up with his forearm covering his eyes, sweating as if he’d just completed a marathon. There was a burble of conversation, but I kept myself to a quiet corner and tried to empty my mind of all thoughts.
My cynicism subsided and I fell into a reverie, quietly contemplating the cold swims of recent weeks and the contrast with this skin-puckering room. I lasted about five minutes before I lunged for the door and forced myself into the iciness of the plunge. A group of women squealed as they immersed themselves. Highgate’s cooling waters had prepared me for this moment and I offered up a simple ‘hnnng’ as I dropped my head and shoulders right in.
My skin seethed as Keeley led us to the ice chips, spat out from a specially designed tap. I scratched some across my face and chest and retired to read in the relaxation room, all dark panelling and slippery, marble floors. I slept and went back for another steam.
Dried off and with the complexion of a prune, I emerged into the spa’s foyer a hopeless convert, Keeley’s glowing face a picture of post-spa happiness. I felt amazing. The feeling was wholly different to the endorphin rush I’d enjoyed on my most recent dips. Movements were slowed, my body didn’t shiver and my mood was blissful rather than ebullient. For a brief moment as we returned to the Tube, I wondered if I ought to make my journey one that visited Britain’s best high-end spas and leave Roger’s swims alone. At that moment, the cost was immaterial.
But my disaffection crept back in the days after. I spoke about it with an old journalist friend. He had lived in Shoreditch, before it had been rid of its character and turned into a theme park for those who thought it was a place the world’s hipsters still bothered with, and told me about trips to Ironmonger Row with fellow hacks. It seems it had become something of a haunt for those after an authentic taste of the East End.
‘It always had the feeling of something about to kick off,’ he said. ‘You got proper characters in there. Cabbies, old Turkish guys on the staff to rub you down, low-level gangsters. There could be a funny vibe, but it was mostly welcoming.’
When I told him how much it now cost, he was gobsmacked.
‘It was eight quid last time I went. That was before it got tarted up, though.’
I felt cheated. For all my elation, it felt like Ironmonger Row was just another place that had lost its soul in this part of town. The revamp had cost £16.5 million between 2010 and 2012. That’s a lot of money to spend on something that looks great but has no heart. Yes, there was still an old-style laundry for the locals, but it felt like the smallest of concessions. Like nearby Spitalfields Market, Ironmonger Row had turned into a parody of its original concept, somewhere for most visitors to go once and forget about, rather than being a cornerstone of a community to always return to. This was an area of East London that was changing rapidly: council houses being sold off, luxury homes being built, people who had lived here for years being forced out. And having gone just that one time, I felt like I was part of the problem.
CHAPTER SEVEN
June
Holkham, Norfolk – River Waveney, Suffolk
With the mixed feelings after my trip to Ironmonger Row still fresh in my mind, I decided to get out of London again and head back up to East Anglia. I wanted to sling myself into cold water and come up dazed and giddy, the regrettable changes at Ironmonger Row blitzed away by the iciness of a slow-moving river.
Yanny and I had plotted another trip to the Waveney, this time to the quiet stretch near Mendham Mill. Summer was here and I was ready for my pasty arms and chest to sear red after a day of swimming and idling.
I had invited my old university friend Tim to come and join us. Tim was a writer also, based in Norwich. We had been firm friends back in the day and I was looking forward to catching up with him and sharing the water with someone new. I enjoyed the fact that as my journey wore on I was surrounding myself with a growing band of willing cohorts. It was proving to be a chance to rekindle old relationships at an age when, it seemed to me, it grew increasingly harder to maintain the friendships of earlier years.
As the knackered train creaked and clattered into Manningtree, past mudflats pockmarked with oyster catchers and derelict factory buildings smashed to smithereens, my phone buzzed. Yanny. He’d had a flare-up of his arthritis and wasn’t going to be able to make it. His guidance at Mendham was essential, my own failure to bring along a map of any kind compounding the problem. Until now I had been solely reliant on Roger’s words and a blind faith in the power of Google Maps. I was going to have to start preparing better.
With no other guide to hand, I dug out Waterlog and scoured the passages dotted throughout the book that dealt with this part of England, Roger’s home. There was his moat at Mellis, but without seeking prior permission we couldn’t swim there. Or John’s Water on the River Bure. But, again, without a map we’d be driving blind along single-track country lanes. And then it appeared on the page, its huge skies and empty sands calling out to me. Holkham Bay.
I broke the news of our change of plans to Tim as we drove out of the car park at Norwich train station. Having only just passed his test a week earlier, Tim wasn’t too concerned about where we were going, just that it was straightforward and that neither of us would die getting there. His licence made him another handy cab driver for my nationwide wild-swimming exploits. I didn’t mention this new role to him as we caught up, but I knew then that we would be seeing a lot more of each other over the coming summer months.
By now it was getting properly warm. We wound down the windows and followed the long road north out of the ‘fine city’ and away to the coast. As the fields flatten here, the skies appear to grow and grow. If Covehithe’s great dome was vast and impressive, this was a whole new level. The only thing blocking the sun were the tall hedgerows lining the dusty roads.
Parking up at Holkham Hall, in the shade of the swaying poplars on the avenue which leads to the beach, Tim was buzzing about our impending dip. Tim’s excitability was legendary among our friends. His capacity to do and try new things had seen him always toe a fine line between the impressive and the idiotic. On the one hand, Tim had become a crack clay pigeon shot, learning the ins and outs of vintage firearms to ensure a key passage in the novel he was writing was accurate in every detail.
On the other hand, I had witnessed him order the hottest curry available on the menu of the greasy tandoori establishment we frequented as students. The reason? Just to prove that he could do it. Sweat poured from his forehead as he mixed more and more rice into the sauce in the hope of cooling it down. This youthful braggadocio had thankfully found an outlet in extreme research for his writing projects.
As we sorted through our swimming kit and locked up the car, Tim told me about a recent sea swim at nearby Waxham, where his wife Lisa had looked on in horror as he’d bounded in, through the high rollers and out into the bob and sway of the North Sea. The water there had made him a convert to the joys of sea swimming, hence he’d got in touch to see if he could tag along next time I was up near Norwich.
Roger’s long walk along this stretch of coastline heralded a day of endless dips in shallow pools left b
y the retreating tide. Walking out over the sandy boardwalk, I was hoping for the same, and as we crested the last high dune, I was not disappointed. A light breeze ruffled my hair, the odd grain of sand catching in my untrimmed beard. As Roger said, the tide line here was ‘only a distant, whispering line of white.’
The huge tidal range at Holkham makes the sand hard as rock the closer you get to the beach. I could feel the thick ridges through the soles of my shoes as we made brisk headway towards the churned-up water, Tim’s carrier bag stuffed with swimming kit cracking in the wind. By contrast, my kit was neatly folded in a large rucksack which sat heavy on my back.
That distant line of white we’d seen half a mile back was now a high, roiling squiggle. The North Sea was swirling in the wind, hissing in the brief moments when the breakers stopped to draw breath. Rather than go in together, we agreed to take a one after the other approach, keeping an eye on the bags. In reality, there was no need for such caution. Our only company was a pair of horse riders splashing in the surf back towards Wells. Only our shared levels of anxiety were to blame for such nervousness. Tim didn’t know that I was on a mission to cure my worries, but I knew that he too suffered. He’d written about it extensively, his book on the subject making for essential reading whenever I caught myself in a fret or panic.
Tim gamely struggled out of his trousers and into his red swimming shorts. He bolted towards the water and shouted bloody murder as the waves took him. His mop of dark curls and his broad shoulders disappeared immediately, the sheer height of the waves making it impossible to spot him. I panicked. What would I tell Lisa? How would I get his car home? Where would his bloated body wash up?