by Joe Minihane
London was cloudless as I pushed through the old kissing gate at the pond’s entrance. Spanish exchange students sunned themselves on the rammed banks, and I had to stuff my rucksack deep into some nettles, the only green space not covered in towels and lithe bodies.
Molly had joined me. It was her first time at the mixed and she was in need of a swim after a sweaty train trip down from Norwich.
We changed quickly and joined the long queue down the jetty towards the cold metal steps. Molly still had her sunglasses on to deflect the glare and had eschewed my high-factor sunscreen for something less protective. She wanted her light skin to tan quicker, she said. Swimmers trod water and waited their turn to climb out as we kicked our legs in preparation for the cool water. It was a refreshing 21°C. Cold enough to know about it, warm enough that you could stay in an age and not get the shivers.
As we swam, heads out and chatting like a pair of swimming retirees in a local pool, we talked about the joys of swimming when skiving. Molly told me about a particularly dull workshop she’d attended in Stratford which she left to go for a swim in the Avon. She’d even bought a single glass of wine from Marks & Spencer to toast her swimming success on the banks afterwards. I could only applaud such dedication to choosing this activity over anything else in life.
This is one of the joys of head-out breaststroke: the chance to swim and catch up at the same time, the social aspect of the experience at its fullest. This was my kind of swimming.
One of the best things about the mixed pond is that no matter how busy it gets, you can always find your bubble. Swim ten metres from where the kids are diving and you’ll find your own space away from the crowds. Plough out the eighty metres to the rope and your nearest company will likely be a golden retriever swimming close to the causeway, a further twenty or so metres away. It’s a place where solitude is an art, a rare thing in our capital city. You can go in harried by the world and emerge cocooned from its excesses.
Molly and I swam in sync, water boatmen darting across our surface-level field of vision. Back towards the jetty, a scream went up as a huge fish galumphed out of the water. Thanks to this interloper, the water cleared, giving us a clear route back to the steps and dry land.
Hampstead’s water had thoroughly soaked my bones and partly allayed my anxieties about how well I was doing with my trip. It also steeled me for what I knew was going to be an awkward trip to Winchester and the fast-flowing Itchen. Roger had revelled in a dispute with the staff from the college in this ancient town, jumping fences and darting along the expensive trout stream, treating it like the wild-swimming paradise it so clearly should have been. When collared he fought his corner expertly, clearly enjoying battling the killjoys who wouldn’t countenance sharing their expensive riparian pleasures.
He described his set-to with a dog-walking warden as ‘first rate’, but I was in no mood for any kind of confrontation. I’d never been bawled out for taking a swim and I didn’t want to start now. My need to stay on the right side of authority, so heavily ingrained since childhood, swelled within me as I walked down the busy high street and onto College Walk.
The Itchen here was hidden from view, fences keeping the chalky path arrow-straight. After half a mile or so, the river swung into view and kissed a high wall. Rushes, weeds and darting fish hove into view. I could make out everything in perfect detail, the water gin-clear and crying out to be swum in. I weighed up picking my way over the barbed-wire fence and being done with it. But the shallow water and long drop meant this was no place to be hopping in.
Instead, I walked on and found the perfect place for a swim. Three benches overlooked a fine curve in the river, water rushing left to right and away out of town. On the far bank, a huge, officious sign had been drilled into the ground:
‘PRIVATE FISHING. NO BATHING.’
I had been prepared for this proprietorial approach. Roger had spoken of this being an expensive place to fish. Today, twenty-four days of trout fishing on the Itchen starts at £2,415.
It was an obscene price to pay and I felt a sudden urge to do as my predecessor had done and stick it to the private members who had taken this river from public use. Rivers should be for everyone. As long as users show respect, there can be space for all.
I walked on. The signs began appearing with more frequency, even as the Itchen crept off into the trees and the path settled back into its straitened ways. I weighed up swimming in the long, man-made stream which ran to my right, but decided it wasn’t deep enough. I stopped on a small bridge and tried to think what I was going to do. I had to swim, but where?
While I muttered to myself over my map, a yellow wagtail dropped to my side, bobbed its tail and flew off downstream. I had begun to formulate a plan and now I followed this natty bird’s lead, convinced it was showing me the way.
A couple of hundred metres on, I found my spot. Where the path met the road and the Itchen turned left to meet the Itchen Navigation, an old wooden field gate hung open, a faded ‘No Entry’ sign stuck fast across its middle. I edged through and tramped across dry leaf mulch towards the water. There was no one around and I knew immediately that this was my place. The path I had walked on was just visible and I could hear voices, so I kept low, changing by the trunk of an oak tree. This was to be my homage to Roger’s long, luxurious Hampshire swim.
I slid myself down the short drop into the Itchen. The long shadows of the trees meant it was brilliantly cold, even in late July. I nosed off, the only things visible the banks to either side, the water racing around me at impressive speed. The odd fish bobbed to the surface, air bubbles echoing outwards, each one doubtless wondering who this joker was and why he was taking a swim in their river.
It felt glorious to be in the scene here, actually part of this spectacular little river, renowned for its wildlife and oxygen-rich water. I ducked my head under and allowed myself a few more minutes before the cold finally got to me and I sprang out, skin raw, the sharp rub of starchy towel on skin bringing me back to reality. I had succeeded, even if it was a shorter swim than Roger had managed. This was becoming a pattern, but it didn’t matter. I was seeing how this journey was turning into my own take on my predecessor’s efforts. Still, I was finding time to enjoy some of the other, non-swimming delights Roger had revelled in here on the Itchen. The sense of stealing a swim, thumbing my nose at the college’s unseen authority figures, felt fabulous and was something I wanted to experience again.
I’d never been one for breaking the rules. At school I’d taken great pleasure in boasting about never getting a detention and was always the first to run away from any kind of trouble. I was the archetypal goody two shoes, something which I had revelled in at the time, even if it made me wholly unpopular with my schoolmates.
This new-found taste for subversiveness, albeit discovered in the hardly daring act of a five-minute swim in a private trout stream, made me like myself more. It was a side of me I wanted to spend more time with. I was finding pleasure in wild swimming beyond the water itself, in the truth and beauty of the wildlife and countryside which I was experiencing now on a regular basis, whether it was accessible to all comers or not. My first illicit dip felt fantastic. I thought of Roger strolling through the long grass in the meadows here, arms swinging, whistling an aimless, happy tune. I know he would have approved of my antics.
I walked back towards Winchester grinning inanely. On the train home, though, a rumble of discontent welled up when I thought about all those prohibitive signs. The right to roam has been greatly extended since Waterlog was written, opening up land that had otherwise been lost to the wider public. But not here in Winchester. I wanted the same golden days, Roger had dreamed about when he came here. Days where the whole town decamped to the Itchen and enjoyed its embrace. There were times like that at lidos now all over the UK, more so than at any time since Roger’s trip, but our rivers were made out to be cut off, unloved and ‘dangerous’ when it came to wild swimming. In fact, they were anything but. They wer
e – they are – magical and waiting to be explored.
One river I’d been desperate to explore further was the Little Ouse in the sandy Brecklands in southern Norfolk, where it flowed through the village of Santon Downham. It sounded far away from everything, a wide trickle in a strange and fantastical place that would provide a neat counterpoint to the chalky dip I’d enjoyed down on the Itchen.
I criss-crossed my way back across the country, stopping in London long enough to cross off the Itchen on my Waterlog planner, spend some time wandering around Ruskin Park with Keeley and get some cursory work done before meeting Tim in Norwich. The weather had taken a muggy turn: warm enough for shorts, wet enough that you needed to sweat your way from car to riverbank in a rain jacket. Tim parked a few feet from the smart iron bridge which crosses the Little Ouse at Santon Downham and we picked our way carefully through tall stinging nettles down to the water. The water looked inviting, and while Tim dallied on the side I got undressed, letting my feet be sucked into the sandy mud beneath the surface.
I could tell Tim wasn’t feeling this spot. Normally he was the first to run headlong into the cold and scream and shout about it. Midges clouded the bank and nipped at my chest as I waded in deeper. A huge dragonfly hovered across my eye line for five seconds before zipping away upstream.
The Little Ouse here was barely thigh deep. Roger spoke of a long wade upstream, letting himself be pushed back towards the village with the current at his back. If it was good enough for him, it was good enough for me. While Tim farted around with his backpack, I went off on a long wander, the rain now falling steadily on my back and keeping me warm as my feet and ankles slowly, steadily lost all feeling in the cold river water. Water crowfoot ballooned around my legs, the occasional air bubble giving up the river’s fishy secrets.
Being the height of summer, everything down the middle channel of this secret river looked green: the water beneath me; the shrubs falling to its edges; the dark, gloomy trees higher up on its banks. A verdant little oasis untroubled by angry signs, it was so unlike the Itchen, but equally as beautiful in its own way.
I finally dipped my shoulders under and belly-slid through the shallows, back towards Tim. With the rain teeming down, it felt great to be properly wet, not just given a cursory soaking while out on a walk.
I’m a passionate hater of the rain. But I had discovered that I loved it when it came down while I was in the water. I’d experienced the rising flotsam during a rain shower at Hampstead mixed pond in my first summer of swimming outdoors and was immediately hooked. It felt like the sky and the pond were at one.
I felt the same here on the Little Ouse, a summer downpour bolstering my mood as I peered out from just above the surface, my nose blowing bubbles as I went. Just as I decided that the cold was getting a bit too much, Tim followed me in, a quick shaft of sunlight greeting his descent into the shallows.
He plunged quickly and swam hard as I hopped back to my bags. As I turned I saw he was about to be trapped in a classic pincer movement by a flotilla of angry looking swans. A pair were sauntering upstream, a trio of cohorts quietly making their way in the opposite direction. I had been hissed at enough to know that angry swans are best avoided. As fast as Tim had got in he was out again, cursing their approach.
We drove through Grimes Graves, the site of a Neolithic flint mine, a prehistoric industrial hub in this rural corner of one of England’s most cut-off counties. I wanted to find the River Wissey, that little hush of a stream which flowed out of MOD land and away to join the Great Ouse on its journey out to the North Sea via the Wash.
We parked up in the village of Ickburgh, by the beautiful stone church of St Peter’s, and set off in completely the wrong direction. We worked our way through tall grass, across private land and over fences looking for this secret spot. Once again, my navigational smarts hadn’t extended to a map. Roger would be appalled, I knew. I vowed that this would be the last time this happened. Surely a swimmer should have a decent map collection to fall back on? I skulked back to the car, angry at myself for getting so close but not doing my research properly. Rather than forgive myself this oversight, I brooded on it as Tim drove me back to Norwich and I boarded the train to London. I managed to convince myself that I wasn’t living up to Roger’s lofty expectations, whatever they were. I don’t doubt that he would have laughed this off and suggested we go for a swim so I could clear my head. Roger had pored over maps in Cambridge University’s library and, rather than beat myself up for failing to do some cartographical planning of my own, I just needed to make sure I did so in the future.
Where I was heading next maps were not required, because a local guide was on hand to direct me. Cropthorne Water Mill at Fladbury on the River Avon was a private affair, and I’d been invited to swim there by the owner, George, after I’d done some detective work, found his email address and written to him about my trip. His cousin Judith had asked Roger down in the 1990s having seen one of his newspaper articles on wild swimming.
The Environment Agency had seemingly wanted to go to war with Judith’s family for having the temerity to paddle in these waters. A letter spoke of the ‘considerable risks’ of jumping into the Avon and the need to ‘take children to a local swimming pool instead’. It clearly hadn’t deterred them.
George and his son John, who had collected me from the train station at Evesham, led me down to the river from the road, ringing a bell and hailing the punt from the mill on the far bank. Attached to a pulley, it slid across the water, a huge group of fifteen swimmers awaiting our arrival on the other side.
It was everything I had hoped for. In my email to George I’d asked if I could possibly come down, snoop about and perhaps go on a long swim upstream. I had thought I’d be the only one taking to the water, pushing off and turning back for London within an hour or two. But already everyone had changed into their swimming kit, ready to join in. After the briefest of introductions to young cousins, grandparents and spouses, I was ushered into a back room of the mill to put on my shorts, before being led up into the living room on the first floor by John and his brother. I knew what was coming.
Roger mentions that swimmers here jumped out of the window into the Avon far below. But he doesn’t say whether he did it. It seemed I had no choice in the matter. John ushered me forward to look out of the window. I had thought it was a sheer drop out into the river, but there was a four-foot wide path skirting the mill which needed to be cleared first. John clambered into the frame of the window, which stood a few inches from the floor, stretched his long tanned arms backwards and catapulted himself out into the open. A huge splash and the odd cheer told me he’d made it safely. His younger brother James was next. He was fourteen and just a few inches shy of six feet. Gangly but extremely confident, he disappeared and emerged soaked and smiling. I tried to remember being his age, memories of failing to flop into the deep end during school swimming lessons once again resurfacing. If these teenagers seemed fearless, it was because they were.
George watched behind me as I moved up to the window and looked out. By now, everyone downstairs was watching, eying me gleefully for any signs of weakness. At that moment I wanted nothing more than to walk back to the river bank, slip in and swim away as fast as possible on a solo exploration. I closed my eyes, the faces of my old classmates gawping and jeering at my eleven-year-old self haunting the darkness. I couldn’t let my hosts down. I hung back in the frame, kept my eyes shut tight, began counting to three and jumped on two. I felt my legs wheeling and then disappeared into the green water.
I emerged gasping to a round of applause. John took my arm and helped pull me out, smiling. His long curly hair was slick across his face, his board shorts slung low.
‘You made it by about four inches,’ he said. ‘Good effort.’
I imagined my heels cracking on the edge of the path, my body sliding forward helplessly into the water. What if I had been the person to end the halcyon days of wild swimming here in Fladbury? I imagined th
e paramedics arriving, shuttling across on the pulley ferry, strapping me to a stretcher. I pictured myself with metal pins through my legs and wearing protective boots on both feet for the next year, a short article on the BBC News website remarking on my idiocy. George and his family having to sell up because of my poor jumping skills, never returning to a place that had brought them so much happiness. Years of anxiety had made me an expert at making imaginary mountains out of non-existent molehills. ‘What ifs?’ were my forte.
Once I’d let my overactive imagination work through this implausible scenario, I realised I was actually in the grip of an intense adrenalin rush. It was a heady mix of the feeling I got after a long cold dip and the joy of abandon I’d felt after my stolen swim on the Itchen. I had found my rebellion in jumping out of mill house windows.
Dried off but still shaking, I took my seat around the large picnic table, listening to Test Match Special with George’s friend Mark and his kids. England were in the process of demolishing the Aussies for the third home series in a row. Mark, a healthy-looking guy in his mid-fifties, had been coming here ever since he was young and told me how proud he was to see his children still able to enjoy the kind of daring activities he and George had indulged in. They were all excellent swimmers, happily practising dives and playfully pushing each other under, enjoying what I saw as a proper, old-style summer holiday.
I had thought my feat of derring-do was enough for the day. But George and Mark had different ideas, talking about erecting a high board on the punt. I had thought this idle chatter until I saw George disappear into the far corner of the garden and start dismantling a hitherto unseen platform usually used for decorating and DIY. Slowly it came down, before being re-erected, stage by stage, on the rickety little vessel. Balanced precariously on either side, George lay a final board about three metres up, and so began an impromptu diving contest.