by Joe Minihane
CHAPTER FOUR
May
River Wensum, Norfolk
The tea-coloured Great Ouse had been something wholly new for me, a challenge and a variation on my previous Waterlog swims. It had taught me I could tackle some of Roger’s more extreme adventures. It had also served as a timely reminder that my anxiety wasn’t disappearing any time soon. That needed work as much as Roger’s trail needed following. But as the days began to lengthen and warm, nerves and worries about long trips and days away from the daily grind slipped away.
I felt an overwhelming sense of excitement about what was to come as summer finally slipped out from behind the clouds. My brief panic had subsided.
I began planning a long trawl through Devon to Dartmoor, and its deep, hidden salmon streams, a three-day adventure on which I’d be joined by Keeley, Tom and Joe. But before heading south I made my last East Anglian trip for some time.
I had wanted to swim in the Wensum ever since I started laying plans for my reappraisal of Roger’s journey, even though he himself hadn’t swum there. His descriptions of the daredevil Sonny Goodson jumping from the 69-foot parapet of Norwich Art School into just 12 feet of water in the Wensum below got me thinking about a long, soothing dip in this river which winds its way through the city I once called home. I had no desire to hurtle off a building I used to pass almost daily as a student, nor to swim in what had become a rather industrial, dirty stretch of water.
Thankfully, Molly had found an ideal spot a few miles upstream where we could enjoy a dip away from prying eyes in much cleaner water. We met at her flat in town, which overlooked the river and where she had seen otters playing in the shallows just the week before. I was jealous of her proximity to such a pretty stretch of water. Tim joined us, checking to see how I was after my recent panic on the Ouse, and we set out at a brisk pace along the Marriott Way, skirting past a used car garage and an industrial estate before hitting a wide path which allowed us to walk easily three abreast. It was mild, and we all knew that if we could work up a proper sweat the cold of the water would be much easier to bear.
Molly walked us to an opening in the trees and parted them to reveal a steep, grassy bank which led down to the Wensum below. It looked still and deep from high up, but as we moved down I could see it slowly trundling towards Norwich. I imagined it becoming brown and turbid as it mingled with the Yare downstream, passed through the Broads and headed out into the North Sea near Great Yarmouth. The Ouse had left an indelible mark on me, letting me see rivers in their future state as I gazed at them in the moment.
The early summer sun’s rays barely reached this shady spot, and so we nattered for a few minutes before Tim began pulling off his T-shirt. I did the same and was soon following him into the water, grateful for my neoprene shoes, the riverbed rocky and painful beneath my feet. It was, unsurprisingly, freezing. Coming after a series of wetsuit dips in the Ouse and Middle Level Drain it felt like my first ever wild swim, the water pushing air from my lungs before I finally got a grip and managed to find a steady rhythm, suspended in the current. A perch rose and flopped out of the water before sinking back down to the deep.
Looking upstream, I could see the tempting blue flash of a rope swinging from a low-hanging willow branch. But the current was too intense and my arms too cold for me to get to it, let alone attempt to climb out along the worn bough before throwing myself into the unknown. Roger probably would have, but seeing as even Tim said he didn’t fancy it, I didn’t worry too much about my unwillingness to try.
Molly joined us and we each swam our own short course lengths, ploughing up and down imaginary lanes. Everything was tinged with spring. The fresh water, the late blossom, the young leaves pushing for the light above the canopy. Possibility was everywhere I looked.
CHAPTER FIVE
June
Lyme Regis, Dorset – West Dart, Devon – River Swincombe, Devon – Chag ford Pool, Devon – River Erme, Devon – Mothecombe Beach, Devon – Cirencester Open Air Pool, Gloucestershire – Sandford Parks Lido, Gloucestershire – Hampstead Mixed Pond, London – Henleaze Swimming Club, Bristol – River Frome, Somerset
The leaves were a darker, deeper shade of green a few weeks later when I decamped to Dorset to get acclimatised for my Dartmoor trip. Summer was on an intermittent hiatus when I arrived in Lyme Regis for a family holiday, but my first task was to drop my luggage at our rented cottage, put on my swimming shorts and talk my dad into taking a dip in the pools which dot the beach from Lyme Regis to Charmouth.
The water here is always calm when I visit and the saltiness of the English Channel on my lips gave me a taste that I became greedy for. Over the next three days I swam twice daily off the town beach, breaststroking out to the furthest buoy before a rope prevented me from entering the channel where fishing boats and yachts putter in and out of the Cobb harbour. My body stopped fighting against the cold press of the waves and soon came to embrace my getting in and out as I pleased. After a winter of wetsuit dips I was finally ready to ditch the neoprene for good, at least until the first frosts of autumn.
It was raining. Big heavy drops hit the windscreen of Tom’s Jag and streams formed down the middle of Dartmoor’s steep, narrow lanes. June had arrived but we had been pitched back into April, fast-moving clouds tracking across the sky when it appeared through a break in the trees.
Our mood was lifted by the sight of runners, scores of them, struggling along outside, marshals in high-vis waving us down single-track lanes whenever there was a big enough gap between athletes. A roadside sign welcomed them all to the Dartmoor Ultra Marathon, a punishing 32-mile run through one of southern England’s hilliest places. Suddenly, getting into a series of upland streams and rivers didn’t seem so hardy after all. Everyone looked knackered as we drove past, but we were just getting started.
We pulled off the running route and came to Hexworthy Bridge, where the West Dart flowed underneath at a nippy pace. The rain had let up, so Keeley, who’d had to miss our family trip because of work, walked with me to the top of the bridge and looked back down into the drink. We held hands and kissed as the rain started up again.
Giant slabs of rock slid from the banks all the way down to the riverbed, which was clearly visible even from such a great height. The water was a golden orange colour and put me in mind of the Jura burn I had dipped my hand into all those months before.
Tom and Joe struggled gamely into their wetsuits while I used a towel to shield Dartmoor from the brilliant white of my backside and got into my shorts. I took a quick jog over to the Dart, following a shingly beach out into the water, which shelved quickly away into blackness. The cold didn’t trouble me unduly and I swam off downstream, the odd bubble rising to indicate one of the native trout had swum off owing to my impertinent intrusion.
Roger spoke of the sweet relief of the Dart when he came to Hexworthy Bridge, diving in after a long car journey from Suffolk. I felt his joy, albeit on a slightly smaller scale, after our hour-long drive from Exeter. The cold water eased out the cramps in my legs, and I could feel the knots in my back loosening up under the weight of the speedy stream.
I joined Tom and Joe exploring further upstream, a dipper tracking our progress and swooping ever onwards, rising quickly from the rocks as soon as we caught sight of him taking a rest. His tail splashed in the white water before heading off for more adventures away from our prying eyes.
Rubbered up, the guys were in a much better state for wading and nosing around, and so I left them to it and dropped back into the river, letting the Dart carry me at a fair lick through a deep eddy and away under the bridge. It felt like my River Bure flume all over again, although this time with the added bliss of the water scouring my skin without the protection of neoprene. I swam hard against the current and back to the beach, where Keeley stood hunkered beneath an umbrella, a towel tucked under one arm and a flask of tea at her feet. I had hardly noticed that it was teeming, rain streaking down the windscreen of Tom’s parked car. Keeley po
ured me a cup and help towel me down, fussing around me happily as I began to shiver.
Buzzing after breaking our Dartmoor duck and relaxing on the vast leather seats of the Jag, I pulled out the map and declared that we were now going in search of Roger’s Sherberton stream. I had a place marked that I thought could be my predecessor’s secret spot, whose location he’d refused to divulge. Roger said it was ‘a place where the Dart is joined by an unusually cold moorland current’.
The Jag, more suited to city streets, struggled up the stiff gradients of the national park’s knackered roads and we clattered over a cattle grid towards the hamlet of Sherberton itself. A promising stream ran parallel to the small, untended road and we ignored various ‘No Parking’ signs, stopping to have a closer look.
A set of submerged stepping stones crossed this little waterway, but it was no more than knee deep. Roger spoke of his place having a ten-foot deep pool where he had spied salmon swimming against the current by the dozen. My map-reading clearly needed some work.
We drove back through Hexworthy Bridge and out onto open moorland. That same little stream we had checked out in Sherberton appeared to meet the Dart further north, although getting to this spot where the river widened was going to require a lengthy tramp from the road. Ditching the car, we stuffed our wet swimming things into bags and headed down a steep, boggy track, the rain making the path almost impassable. Nestled into my waterproof, I thought of those runners, splashing out mile after mile with no respite in sight.
Soon the Dart was upon us, moving fast towards where we had swum an hour previously and offering up wild-swimming spots at what seemed like five-metre intervals. There was still a mile to walk, and Keeley had to gently remind me that if I got into the water here I probably wouldn’t get to sink my shoulders in Roger’s chosen place. I grudgingly agreed, knowing she was right.
By now the weather was finally on the turn and we found the confluence of the Dart and the pretty River Swincombe, the little stream we’d explored earlier, to be the most perfect swimming spot imaginable.
A long set of stepping stones stood proud in the shallows, the sweeping beach marked here and there with crusty cow shit. The Swincombe didn’t rush into the Dart in a torrent, like Roger said, but just upstream I could see the water deepened into pools which looked dark and mysterious, the perfect place for spawning salmon. I was sweaty and tired of trying to recreate things perfectly, and so got changed and splashed in. There may not have been a torrent, but it was certainly ‘unusually cold’ in this place, far more so than down at Hexworthy. Even after a week of countless cold water swims, the breath was knocked out of me as I dived to the bottom and resurfaced gasping hard and fast. It felt fantastic.
Keeley, Tom and Joe had watched sceptically as I waded in, reluctantly agreeing to my hectoring about wetsuits and summer weather. Each of them stripped down to their swimming gear and looked on as I called them in, promising it would be warm once they took the plunge. They tiptoed across the sharp stones of the beach and shared looks of bewilderment as one by one they entered the fast-flowing stream. I swam on my back, watching as they finally dunked themselves and rose spluttering, laughing obscenities at me about the cold. It may have been my fault for starting this adventure, but it wasn’t as if I had a say over the temperature.
I had left the snorkel I’d bought in Lyme Regis in the car, so had to make do with taking deep breaths and peering down into the deep pools with the standard-issue swimming goggles I had remembered to stick in my rucksack. There were no salmon I could see, perhaps because of four interlopers creating such an almighty racket about thirty yards downstream.
I left the others to acclimatise and went off towards where the Swincombe began to mingle with the Dart. It was shallow, the riverbed shelving from the confluence into the deep pool I had just been exploring, a pair of weeping willows draping their spindly fingers across the Swincombe. I eased the tresses to one side to find a stream no more than a foot deep, the willows’ roots swaying gently in the current. I couldn’t think of a better place for a resting salmon to hole up, but alas I wasn’t in luck. It all brought to mind the long tresses of Pre-Raphaelite water crowfoot in the River Bure back in February, except today I wasn’t in a wetsuit and the now searing summer heat meant I wasn’t in need of a flask of tea and the immediate attentions of a car radiator to warm me up.
As in the Fens, I felt like a tiny speck on the landscape, far away from everyday reality. Nestled deep in this Dartmoor valley, unreachable via my smartphone, I remembered that true escape was the essence of wild swimming: escape from needless worries and anxieties, from fear, from being hassled. But I was also reminded that as much as being in the water is about escape, it is also about joy. Sharing swims like this made me happy, especially seeing people who would previously have never done something like this taking time to swim back and forth, totter over stepping stones and jump into the deep. Coming to these places made me realise that this was what made my life worth living.
Looking at Joe, Tom and Keeley getting out and chatting, I saw that wild swimming was something that anyone could do and love. Sure, they were cold, but they looked more than content, joking and towelling off damp hair, ready to go where Roger pointed. Four years ago I couldn’t have imagined myself ever being in a situation like this, and now it was all I ever wanted to do, a way of keeping demons at bay, of spending time with people I cared about. I had Keeley to thank for taking me to Hampstead mixed pond in the first place. She waved from the bank as she waded out and gave me a thumbs up, her hair tied up high to stop it from getting wet. I fancied I could see her blue eyes brighten in the sunlight. It was wonderful to be sharing a swim with the person I loved most.
The Dart had fast become my favourite river, a place I knew I would rave about to anyone who cared to listen when I told them about my latest swimming escapades. But there were more places to see and time was limited. My planning had been meticulous for this trip, despite the jolly, laid back nature of it, and after eating a pub lunch and guzzling bitter shandies, we drove north across Dartmoor for an end-of-day swim in the pool at Chagford. This little lido sits flush against the banks of the Teign, high reeds visible above the fence which marks out the far side of the 25-metre pool. Its big draw is the fact that the water comes from the river via a mill leat and, although chlorinated, it tastes suitably fresh when you accidentally take a gulp.
The swimming here was dreamy and fun, a little more ordered than the chaotic flow of the Sherberton stream but none the worse for it. A group of local kids in rubber rings played in the roped-off shallow end, while a bunch of teenage lads performed handstands and lifted each other out of the water, egging each other on to dive and cannonball into the deeper water at the far end. A brutal game of splash erupted, but the lifeguards looked on, impassive.
Joe and I, both fans of ploughing out lengths during the week back in London, settled into a steady rhythm of front crawl and breaststroke to warm up, while Tom and Keeley pottered along at their own pace.
Afterwards, drying off in the sun and drinking tea from an official Chagford Pool mug (50p hire charge), I fell into conversation with Sue, one of the relaxed lifeguards. She explained that she had moved to Chagford in 1985 and started working at the pool around the same time. She had fallen in love with the place and never left. I told her about my Waterlog mission.
‘You’d be surprised by the number of people who do what you do,’ she said.
For a moment, I had a sudden panic. Was there a rival Roger acolyte going around the country, swimming in every spot and obsessively logging their experiences?
She said that it was more that people came to the pool because of its mention in Waterlog and various wild-swimming guides. A pathetic sense of relief surged over me. She said a growing interest in outdoor swimming, plus the fact that the nearest indoor pool was an hour away in Exeter, had saved this wonderful place from going out of business.
Like Hathersage, I loved the self sufficiency and commun
ity atmosphere at Chagford. It was resolutely old school. The changing rooms had been done up in 2000 and a new tank fitted earlier in 2014 to stop leakages, but it felt timeless. When I told Sue how good it was that the eaves of the recently renovated changing rooms played home to nesting swallows, she agreed.
‘It’s great that they’re here. The only problem is having to clean the shit from the changing room floors.’
The following morning we left the moors behind, Tom carefully steering the Jag down single-track lanes towards Mothecombe and the Erme estuary. After being cooled by the Dart and exercised in Chagford, stopping at this outstanding stretch of coastline had felt like a logical next move for Roger, and I could see why. The surroundings were wholly different to those of Dartmoor, but the sense of isolation was just as vivid. The V-shaped Coastguards’ beach which jutted out from the Erme looked astonishing from up on the clifftops.
Roger swam here on the rising tide, pushed inland and towards the narrow, verdant, vertiginous walls which the river had carved out after tumbling its way through Dartmoor. On his trip, surfers sat waiting to ride in on the huge rollers which battered the sand bar that divided sea from estuary, but those with boards were only just making their way onto Coastguards’ beach when we emerged onto the sand, the tide just about slack. We walked hurriedly across to where the stream-like Erme stood limpid and slow flowing, reduced to a shallow trickle.
Tracing it inland, I couldn’t help but find the Erme less than tempting. The beach itself was beautiful, but the river was an off-green colour and chock full of weeds, just as Roger had described. But with the weather so good and no chance of coming back any time soon, we were left with no choice but to swim.