by Joe Minihane
This approach had worked well on all of the swims I’d enjoyed since returning to the water, especially on the Bure and at Stockbridge. With this more rounded take on things in mind I took the train north to ‘the Pool in the Peaks’ in Hathersage on something of a whim, again choosing to push work around so I could squeeze in a swim. This was a perk of freelancing I had rarely used before, and I told myself that I had no one to answer to but myself. It felt liberating not to berate myself for choosing to do something fun and not see it as unproductive or a waste of time.
The heated outdoor pool in Hathersage opens all year round and I was particularly looking forward to seeing whether it remained a local institution, as Roger had found on his visits, not to mention taking a dip that didn’t leave me shuddering with cold afterwards. My predecessor spoke of ‘spectacular views of the Peaks on all sides’, but it was a proper pea-souper when I arrived with my uncle Dave, who had driven down from his home near Huddersfield to join me, the only view that of the empty bandstand and the odd plastic picnic chair laden with towels and swimming gear.
The temperature had also dropped, meaning steam was rising as I paid the £6 entry fee, the smell of cooking bacon rising from the adjacent café and a handful of swimmers ploughing out lengths, even though it was a cold Tuesday morning.
Since Roger’s swim here, the parish council, which runs the pool, has fixed up the changing rooms and ensured the bandstand conforms to the EU standards of which it had fallen foul back in the late nineties when Roger came. It holds regular night swims with live music to accompany those countless laps, plus charity events and garden parties over the summer. The heating is switched off over the winter, but swimmers still come for regular dips and to catch up with friends and neighbours.
I slid into the luxurious 28°C water at the deep end, eavesdropping on conversations about the school run, lunch meetings and weekend trips into the hills while I demisted my goggles. I swam off on the must-do forty lengths of a kilometre, finding a steady rhythm while a lifeguard used a mop to clean the sides of the pool. I caught a glimpse of Dave in the general swim area, nosing out a few lengths.
The same convivial atmosphere Roger had found here was alive and well, it appeared. I’d be lying, though, if I said I wasn’t delighted when, one by one, my fellow swimmers – Dave included – vacated the water and left me on my own to enjoy the glassy surface, just as I had at Parliament Hill a year before.
After I’d reached my arbitrary swim target, I joined Dave for tea in the impressive grandstand which lines one side of the pool. A set of old church pews provided corrective seating, forcing visitors to sit upright and pay attention. At one end there was a banana box stuffed full of books for sale for £1, the proceeds going to the upkeep of the pool and its grounds. I passed over the dog-eared copy of cricket commentator Brian Johnston’s autobiography and instead stuck a quid in the collection box without taking a tome.
It’s essential that lidos like this stay central to their communities. In London, lidos have enjoyed a recent boom, with the reopening of Charlton and the ever popular London Fields joining well-known spots at Brockwell, Parliament Hill and Tooting Bec.
Every summer, queues snake around the block to get into these establishments, a sign that the ‘healthier, happier, more sensual days’ Roger hoped for when he found lidos left to rot in the late nineties are most definitely here. Ambitious projects such as the new outdoor, all-natural pool in King’s Cross and plans for a bath on the Thames at Bankside show that swimming is once again becoming an essential part of our daily well-being, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally too. It makes us feel both fitter and calmer.
But it isn’t just in the capital. Hathersage is going strong and new funding has been found for the stunning art deco Saltdean Lido in Brighton. Cheltenham’s beautiful lido is also basking in huge popularity. It’s not just the exercise. It’s the sense of community, where everyone is stripped down and doing the same thing, coming together to talk, relax and enjoy the weather, remembering that life is at its best when it’s spent idling and taking time to enjoy bright and beautiful surroundings. This was a lesson it had taken me a long time to learn, but I realised that it was such places, these communal baths and pools, that really made me feel at peace when I swam. The idea that other people enjoyed the same thing as me felt magical, as if we were all in on a badly kept secret. Even on a cold day in Hathersage, it was impossible to escape the feeling that the swimming revolution Roger had dreamt of when writing Waterlog was finally happening across the UK.
Rather than staying up north, where winter still seemed to be clinging on, its icy prints all over the puddles of towpaths and the shallows of lakes, I swung back south to meet Tim for an altogether different trip than my one to Hathersage. Back in Norfolk, spring weather and high skies made for a less claustrophobic atmosphere than the claggy hills Dave and I had driven over after our swim at the pool in the Peaks. It was good to see proper daylight and to be heading for some cold, open water. Best of all, I was once again sharing it with someone close. It wasn’t lost on me that all of the swims I’d done in recent months, even the journeys when I was unable to get in and indulge, had been enjoyed in good company. That sense of collective joy was addictive, and something I didn’t want to lose as the journey’s momentum continued to grow. The fact that Dave, Tim, Molly and everyone else I had swum with were willing to come with me at short notice was very special. It was a strong antidote to the loneliness I had often felt when working at home, alone.
There wasn’t a cloud in the sky when Tim and I met in Downham Market and drove towards Well Creek and the village of Outwell. Roger swam here after bathing in the Little Ouse at Santon Downham and the whispering Wissey near Ickburgh, before heading north towards Hathersage and onwards for his date with Jura and the Gulf of Corryvreckan. Not for the first time, I had that feeling of doing this trip arse about face, having done, or at least attempted, all of those dips in the past few months. The main thing was I didn’t care.
We pulled up by a pretty church in the centre of the village, trees in full blossom in the neatly kept graveyard, and set out on foot along the narrow road towards our two intended swimming spots. As I’d found on my trip to the Lark, the Fens can be overwhelming, a vast space in which anything is possible and you are just a speck in an empty landscape. The map in my hand was streaked with straight blue lines, criss-crossing each other and promising boundless swims as long as our bodies and minds craved them.
I kept such bucolic notions to myself, because in reality I knew that we were really heading for a wide drainage channel and a shallow canal where the two bodies of water crossed at an aqueduct. Tim seemed buoyed by the good weather and the thought of a chilly swim and I didn’t have the heart to tell him that this wouldn’t quite be the same as the day he’d flung himself into the Wissey from a rope swing.
I was surprised he hadn’t realised. I had floated a trip to Well Creek the previous summer to both him and Molly, and even sent them a picture of the aqueduct, promising it would be a unique and different take on all the sea and river swims we’d been enjoying. Molly’s reply said it all.
‘I’m not swimming in a canal, mate. It looks shit.’
With that, I’d shelved my plans for Well Creek. But with Molly unavailable, I’d coaxed Tim into thinking this would be an idyllic break from the book he was in the midst of editing. To be fair, the walk from Outwell down to the aqueduct was beautiful, barges moored at intervals and mallards snooping under the water for an easy meal. The day was still and fresh.
Arriving at the aqueduct, we were greeted by tall fences coated in anti-climbing paint and designed to prevent swimmers from slinging themselves into the depths of Middle Level Drain, which ran at a stately pace beneath it. ‘No swimming’ signs dotted the banks, alongside dark warnings of £5,000 fines for anyone who trespassed on the sluice gates between aqueduct and drain.
Well Creek itself looked in a sorry state. Its banks had burst during the r
ecent storm surge which had also battered the coast at Burnham, and the water was a filthy light-brown colour. The only people who could see us were the drivers of HGVs which thundered along the adjacent road, but Tim and I both baulked at the idea of paddling along its narrow course. Roger had made it sound like the perfect swimming hole, when in fact it was anything but.
Instead, we crossed the creek at a nearby bridge and dropped down to Middle Level Drain to at least attempt one of Roger’s two swims here. On his visit Roger had encountered a group of teenagers ‘clocking up hundreds of pounds of Environment Agency fines’ by jumping from the sluice gates, but our only company was a sole mute swan about 200 metres downstream.
We had picked a spot east of the aqueduct, where Roger had swum west. Despite having to negotiate a steep bed of stinging nettles and standing on a retaining wall littered with old fag packets and crushed cider cans, I was able to concur with my predecessor when he said this ‘was the most beautiful drain I had ever seen’. Early season oilseed rape swayed on the far bank, and the now high sun lent everything a distinctly midsummer air.
I didn’t allow myself to be fooled by this intimation of heat and yanked on my wetsuit before slipping in from the wall and heading east, looking far off down the straight channel towards where it met the Great Ouse south of King’s Lynn. It was like nowhere I had swum before, the arrow-like channel so different from the swooping meanders of the little rivers into which I’d thrown myself over the past two years. I felt suddenly tiny and alone, that familiar Fenland feeling returning, although this time it made me feel more alive and less inconsequential than it had done back on the Lark. Loneliness didn’t cross my mind. There was just me, an endless blue sky and the quiet hiss of the farm fields as the breeze ruffled through them.
And, of course, Tim.
‘Er, mate, what’s it like in there?’
I turned back and gave him a quick report. Cold, deep, beautiful.
With that, Tim, in his maroon swimming shorts and nothing else, sat himself down on the wall and flopped in, immersing himself as he went. I felt bad watching him gee himself while I’d donned my neoprene. I had promised him an Arcadian wild-swimming adventure, but this was definitely not what he had had in mind.
He swam across to me with his usual ebullience, hollering for all the Fens to hear as we trundled back and forth across the drain, a surprisingly strong current, not visible from the road, pulling at my arms and legs. I hopped out and Tim followed, a cool gust of wind reminding me that he would be feeling the cold far more than I was. I passed him a towel and he rubbed himself down furiously, doing the strange, monosyllabic chuckle he always does when he’s having a good time. Hearing it made me realise I didn’t need to feel bad about bringing him here.
My wetsuit now a sopping mess around my ankles, I was more than up for decamping to Downham Market, finding a café and reading the paper. But Tim knew there was another Waterlog swim just a five-minute drive away and was not letting me off that easily.
I found that, unlike Roger, my urgency to return to the water after one swim was never great, but in Tim I had the ultimate companion for egging me on further into the journey. Tim’s peer-pressure antics always meant having one extra drink or another pull on a joint when we were students, often with me being the guy having a nap in the corner while the house party kicked on into the small hours. Now his urging was a lot kinder and led to a lot more fun. Plus it wasn’t as if these flat stretches of Norfolk farmland were within spitting distance of my Camberwell flat. There were still dozens of Roger’s swims left to do, and getting here took time. Tim’s gentle coaxing was the necessary shove I needed to keep going. It was another reason why sharing this trip was becoming so vital.
Dried off and packed up, we drove to nearby Salter’s Lode, parking up and setting out towards Denver Sluice, the towering gates of which hold back the Ouse and the various relief channels that mark this watery, reclaimed place. We walked a few minutes along the high levee of the Old Bedford River, getting ever closer to the sluice, where brown, gloopy water roiled white and poured forth towards the Great Ouse. Swimming here would not only be a logistical nightmare, it would also be dangerous. Thankfully, Roger’s chosen spot was a little further downstream from the gates, so we turned and headed there, glancing down the fifty-foot banks towards the fast-moving water with excitement. My urge for a dip had risen again.
We passed over a series of lock gates and crossed Well Creek where it flowed into the Great Ouse, far less grimy than it seemed a few miles upstream. The river here was tidal and the water was oozing out towards the Wash, leaving the thick brown muddy riverbed exposed to the spring sunshine. We alighted on a spot opposite a convenient beach and inched down towards the water’s edge, my hands scratched by errant thistles as I went.
I decided not to dally and pulled out the wetsuit, dolling myself up in record time, surprised that the damp neoprene didn’t make me feel queasy. While Tim dug around in his bag looking for his shorts, I made for the Ouse, attempting to edge in gently but slipping on my backside on the wet, slick mud and entering the murky water feet first.
It felt so different from the drain of an hour before, less industrial despite being the colour of over-stewed tea. The water was thick and silty in my hands and pushed me downstream at Phelps-like pace. I tried to swim across to the beach, which was bathed in afternoon sun and looked like the perfect place to flop out after a hard swim, but the sheer pace of the Ouse pushed me on further and further. I let it take me, whirling my arms in long, joyous strokes as I looked up at the high green banks. Although the road ran parallel to the Ouse, the dyke was so high that any car noise was muffled and impossible to hear above the rush of the river.
I spun myself around and tried to swim against the heavy push of this great river, but made next to no progress. I was stuck stock still in this fashion when I saw Tim inadvertently slip as if on a park slide and crash into the water. For once, he didn’t shout, the silt keeping the Ouse warm and Tim quiet.
Getting out proved to be far harder than getting in, the slippery banks offering no purchase to the wild swimmer clad in a wetsuit and neoprene socks. With great difficulty I pulled at young reeds and cut my hands on more thistles, finally making it back to my bags more exhausted by the exit than the swim itself. Tim swam on, lost in a dream.
Back at our bags on the high bank, we took our time getting dressed. I unzipped the chest pocket of my coat and went to put on my wedding ring, which I had taken to pulling off when I went for a dip, just in case it slipped off while swimming. It wasn’t there. My face flushed with panic and I began emptying pockets and tearing through my rucksack, flinging wet towels and muddy boots every which way.
‘It’s gone. Fuck, it’s gone.’
Tim looked at me, his face a picture of calm.
‘What’s gone?’
‘My wedding ring. Oh Christ, what the fuck am I going to do? It’s gone. I knew I should have kept it on, it never slips off. Never.’
My anxiety wouldn’t subside. I was reaching the outer edges of a panic attack. Any breathing techniques were useless to me. My frantic search went on. I delved into each pocket of my bag and scrabbled around on the rough grass, cutting my already bloody hands on more thistles, hoping to see a glint of platinum. I plunged my hand one final time into the jacket pocket I was sure I had left it in and felt metal. I pulled the ring out, pushed it onto my finger and took deep, heaving breaths. It had been in there all along.
Tim looked on as I packed up, mortified. Like Molly, Tim knew I had sought help for my anxiety. Tim also suffers, which meant he was adept at keeping me calm as I stuffed everything away again and we began walking back towards the car.
I apologised. And then apologised again.
‘Mate, you don’t have to say sorry. I guess the only thing is, you have to try and think what the worst thing is that could have happened. The jeweller you got it from would have had your size, you’d have had to spend some money to replace it, and that�
��s that.’
It was exactly the kind of situation I had spoken with Mark about. Rising panic never fixed anything, but in the moment, it felt like the only thing that could make things better. I had forgotten to say ‘fuck it’, to recognise the situation as a fleeting moment that would pass. It was an important lesson.
I tried to recapture the high I had felt in the immediate aftermath of the swim, but instead felt embarrassed. It was instructive to know that these things could still happen and that I was still learning how to deal with them.
I managed to calm myself properly as we loaded up the car, silently reciting Mark’s essential mantra as we drove over the Great Ouse and around to the gates of Denver Sluice. We walked back and forth across them, the water appearing calm on the surface, but full of violent potential as it rushed through the gates and down into the Ouse.
Like Roger, I found it hard to comprehend the idea of hidden little rivers like the Wissey, Lark and Little Ouse all winding up here in this great watery Fenland holding pen, ready to be unleashed for a turbulent trip into the North Sea. I loved the thought that the crystal-clear Wissey, just a few miles east, and into which I had waded a few months before with a broken wrist, could become something so much more powerful when it teamed up with other, similarly unthreatening, waterways. Watching the water behind Denver Sluice and looking east across the Fens, I slowed my breathing and fingered my wedding ring, anxieties allayed for now, the water soothing me. This was still a journey I was travelling on and one which was unlikely to ever end.