by Joe Minihane
After changing behind some convenient dunes next to Boult Hill Plantation, we made our way into the still, shallow water. Roger had talked of hurtling with the current and being washed up by the old lime kilns which we could see in the distance, but our experience was set to be a wholly different one. I waded in and grimaced, the cold numbing my feet. I heard Joe, Tom and Keeley muffled growls and splash on behind me. By now we were deep into the estuary mouth, with boats moored ad hoc along the course of the river.
The riverbed suddenly bottomed out and I was able to swim against the easy current, turning to look out along the green tunnel towards the whip and thrash of the English Channel. The surfers were now taking up their places in the distant waves, a sure sign that soon this whole stretch would be flooded.
By now we were all warming to the task. The morning sun had breached the tree tops and was heating the water nicely. Having swum so much in recent days, it felt like this was my natural element, as if I belonged more in the water than on dry land. I imagined this was how Roger felt come the end of his journey: that walking on sand, rock and stone was a poor substitute for getting into the water and being part of the scene. I tried to remember how I had learnt to have a feel for the water without getting in, but at that moment, only being under the surface was going to do it for me.
As at Sherberton, I felt so very far away from anything. The idea of getting into Tom’s car and driving back to a city of millions of people seemed faintly ridiculous, as if this place and my home weren’t in the same country but on different planets. The only other people close by were those I was with, at least that I could see. The boats seemed empty and the surfers were pinpricks against the horizon.
I swam onto the little beach next to our swimming spot and allowed the sun to dry me off. I contemplated the water: the same stuff I had dismissed as off-green was now a sparkling azure, clear where the guys still swam and chatted. It made this place all the more tropical and added to the sense of ‘dream swimming’ which Roger spoke about.
My contemplative mood was quickly shattered as we began our walk back towards the causeway which led up and away from the beach. The tide was rolling in rapidly, surfers zooming into view and fast-moving water pushing us closer and closer to the rocks and higher ground. Suddenly, people emerged from every corner of the estuary. Dog walkers, kite flyers, swimmers – all of whom had somehow been hidden from view – were making their way to the same place we were. Perhaps this wasn’t the isolated place I thought it was.
Did it matter? I had felt that sense of isolation so strongly that it was impossible to deny it. I pondered this as we formed a queue to reach the path that led up to the cliffs and the access point for Mothecombe beach. The water was now licking the edges of the estuary, but everyone around me seemed so delighted. They had made it here early enough to frolic on the sand or in the water and didn’t seem disappointed by the fact that nature had curtailed their fun. Quite the opposite. There was the same sense of shared experience I had found in lidos around the country. We made it here separately and now we were all leaving together, most of us heading to share more time on nearby Mothecombe beach.
It was a public day on this private beach, the landowners allowing all and sundry to walk down the sunken path which cut down from the Erme estuary and out over the dunes onto the most magical of sandy bays.
England was at play here, despite a high sheet of grey cloud sliding landwards. Windbreaks formed makeshift camps for extended families, dads built elaborate sandcastles, grandparents slept in the artificial shade and kids ran into the foamy shallows.
The waves were pounding the beach, throwing up spume and making the water look unswimmable. A pair of surfers could be spotted at intervals as the crests of waves subsided, sitting far away and waiting for the perfect roller to bring them back to shore. I clambered back into my clammy shorts, already caked in sand from my excursion in the Erme, and legged it with the others straight into the sea.
Thigh deep, I took a quick dive under and got wiped out by a thunderous white wave hurtling into land. I got up, waded back out, and did the whole thing again. Keeley laughed as I repeated this cycle, before we finally managed a few strokes to meet Joe and Tom, who had settled into a game of wave-jumping. It was an impossible task. Just when you thought you’d escaped one monster, another, larger one appeared as a harsh reminder that the sea is the boss.
Delirium soon began to settle in and we fell into hysterics as, one after another, we got an absolute battering. People would surely pay good money for this kind of pounding at a fancy Turkish bath. I looked around and realised there were dozens of people enjoying the same game. Just a few feet away a hulking giant of a man, his bald head reddening in the June sun, disappeared beneath the drink with a deadly serious look slapped across his face and emerged grinning like a buffoon.
Even as grey clouds slanted across the sun and rain began to fall, the beach didn’t empty and the water remained a human soup. A group of kids, no more than ten years old, were jumping waves too, albeit in slightly shallower water. I felt I had happily regressed to their age, my only concern being dodging the next breaker. There was nothing else.
After half an hour we emerged, skin puckered and red, facing up to the realisation that our Devon jaunt was over. Ahead of us was a long drive back to the Smoke, but our memories of these special swims wouldn’t fade fast. For days, all I had been concerned with was water, the very nowness of it – perhaps this was the ‘third thing’ about it that Roger mentions at the start of Waterlog, the thing other than hydrogen and oxygen. So much swimming was having a huge affect on me, and in a positive way; I felt happier, less anxious and more content, as if the journey was finally showing me the way now I had stopped trying to ape Roger and do things at my own pace and in my own way. Swimming was most definitely helping, especially in such good company.
I took just enough time back in London to clean and dry my shorts and towel before getting back on a train and heading out west, this time to Cirencester and its open-air pool. I was going to meet Tom, my best friend with whom I’d swum in Burton Bradstock at the start of my Waterlog adventure.
Tom hadn’t been on as many swims with me as either of us would have liked, and this was a chance to make up for lost time. He’d made a mix CD specially and slipped it on as we drove out of his home town of Oxford. Tom Petty blasted out of the little speakers in his Mini.
Tom and I had bonded over music while students. It was a shared language, something which we could always come back to. The first time I’d met Tom, the first thing he asked me was whether I wanted to hear a pirated copy of the new Radiohead album. He was going to play it on his university radio show and handed me a flyer, telling me what time he’d be broadcasting his ill-gotten copy of this most sought-after LP. It wasn’t long before we had a show together, delighting and confounding the student body with second-rate Britpop selections, Jeff Buckley album tracks and the occasional soul classic.
As the trip had gone on, I’d unintentionally embarked on a parallel journey into the world of songs about swimming, sharing my discoveries with Tom, whose excitability was infectious. I listened to my playlist religiously whenever I took trains to meet Tim and Molly, and had done so today as I’d left London. I was obsessed with Kate and Anna McGarrigle’s version of Loudon Wainwright’s ‘Swimming Song’ and the lazy flow of Nick Drake’s ‘River Man’. The latter had a slow, gliding rhythm which for me always evoked my first river swim on the Granta. It coloured that day, and my earliest swims in Roger’s in wake, in a sepia tint which grew with time.
At that moment I was particularly obsessed with a solo artist called Mutual Benefit, whose EP ‘Love’s Crushing Diamond’ had just been released and featured songs focusing on swimmers, rivers and the search for tranquillity. I had listened to the twenty-minute suite on the way to see Tom that morning. I found that the words of the final track, ‘Strong Swimmer’, filled me with the essence of the water, the way it nuzzled and gilded every pore of
my body. It was that same elusive touch when I was in or near the water. I listened to it before and after I went swimming, to prepare myself for the water and to amplify its beauty.
These lines in particular stood out:
I clear my mind of joy and sorrow river
doesn’t know tomorrow
rolls along with such simplicity.
I felt it summed up how I felt in these months after I had broken my wrist. Every time I thought of or was near water, my mind was at peace, the river or the sea or the lido buoying me up without judgement, making everything simple. Helping me see the world anew.
I wasn’t afraid to tell Tom about how I felt about this. We’d been the closest of friends for almost fifteen years and I told him about the record, which of course he’d already heard, and how it made me feel. He knew too about the help I had been receiving from therapy. I told him how much I was loving spending time with old friends, how the journey was taking on a more profound and rounded meaning than I could ever have hoped. I gave his leg a squeeze as we headed off down the A34. It was great to see him.
Summer was officially here and, as the miles passed, the excitement began to grow. It was a beautiful day and we were going to cool off in the most perfect place imaginable. I had done plenty of research about Cirencester’s pool and was set for it to be every bit as splendid as Roger had found it almost twenty years ago. I wasn’t disappointed.
We reached the pool via a narrow alleyway, crossing the bridge over a small stream and handing over £4.50 each to one of the attendants, who dropped the change into an old ice cream tub. There was no contactless payment option here. The ‘old-fashioned charm’ that Roger had enjoyed was very much in evidence: the blue-washed walls, the breeze-block changing rooms and the wire baskets for stashing your clothes were all still there. The only concession to modernity seemed to be a single electric shower, doubtless installed in case anyone wanted a quick warm-up after a dip on a day cooler than this.
The water was heated to 26°C and there was no segregation. Serious swimmers mingled with kids splashing in the shallow end, while locals trod water in the middle of the pool. Best of all, it was absolutely packed. It was a weekday lunchtime, but it felt as if half of Cirencester had sacked off work for the afternoon and decided to come down to have a swim and drink tea from the Tuck Shop, its serving hatch doors flung open to reveal an array of unhealthy treats for post-paddle enjoyment.
The water here was natural, like at Chagford. It came from a nearby spring and felt silky on my skin as I slowly worked my way through a series of lengths of breaststroke. My whole body cast a long shadow along the white-washed bottom, and occasionally I caught sight of Tom, wide eyed and goggle free, going about his own exertions.
The view was none too shabby either, the old Cecily Hill barracks looming on one side and making the whole place feel like a castle’s private playground. I loved that a community-run pool such as this could still be popular, that Roger’s call to arms and the work of other outdoor swimming campaigners had ensured that being outdoors like this on a summer’s day wasn’t a niche activity for English eccentrics, but one that anyone could do as long as they had a spare half hour. The people of Cirencester certainly seemed to think so.
I barraged Tom with this swimming manifesto as we left the pool and went to find somewhere for lunch. He listened to my ceaseless chatter about how this country seemed to be in the grip of an outdoor swimming renaissance.
Cirencester’s water had quickly reawakened the joy I’d felt when I emerged onto Mothecombe beach. I’d become an evangelist, preaching to anyone who would listen about how and why swimming could make us all happier and healthier.
At this point I was desperate to find another swim. It was early afternoon, a Friday, and I couldn’t think of a better time to carry on my mission. No work was going to get done today. Back in the car I mentioned to Tom that I needed to swim at the lido in Cheltenham, hoping he’d be keen to go, but not expecting him to push on further west and out of his way.
‘Let’s go now,’ he said. ‘Come on, when are you going to be down this way again?’
Tom was just one of a growing band of cohorts who were seemingly ready to drop everything to join me for a dip. Keeley, Tim, Joe, Tom and Molly didn’t simply shrug when I told them of my plans – they actively embraced them. It made the mission fun. I was enjoying the company and the way swimming brought me closer to people I loved and taught me new things about them every time we headed for a river, lido, lake or beach: About their fearlessness in the water, their willingness to follow my dodgy map-reading, and their varying abilities behind the wheel (admittedly always better than mine).
By the time we reached Cheltenham it was 3 p.m. and the whole town seemed to have the same plan as us. The lido car park was full and a queue filed out from the turnstiles. We crawled along Georgian terraces, found a place to squeeze in Tom’s Mini and walked the ten minutes back to the pool.
Cheltenham Lido is arguably the most beautiful example of an outdoor pool in the UK. Its wedding-cake fountains were spraying forth as we entered, the huge pool opening out among beautifully manicured lawns, where all of Cheltenham seemed to be sunning itself. The lido was given a full makeover in 2006/7, having been saved for the town by a group of dedicated trustees, and it retains the charm which Roger found when he visited in the late 1990s. Its grand café, with its stunning portico, was rammed, and the lawns were barely visible beneath damp towels and sizzling skin. A short slide played host to a never-ending rotation of kids, screaming as they dropped into the drink.
The serious swimmers were roped off to one side, three lanes marked out for those who had come to go back and forth rather than loll and splash. A group of teenage boys, bodies perfectly sculpted and side partings razor sharp, wandered past, pretending not to stare at a group of girls who swung their feet in the deep end. Their studied indifference was a sight to behold.
I dropped into the medium lane and tried my best not to tap the feet of the woman swimming slowly in front. No joy. I switched to a speedier front crawl, overtook her and tumbled back at the end of the fifty metres, only to find myself being tapped by a more athletic swimmer behind me.
Regulating my speed in a busy lane was something I had yet to master, and I parked myself in the shallows waiting for a decent gap to emerge. I could only envy Roger, who’d come here early in the day and had the whole lido to himself. I could wait here until closing and that wouldn’t happen. The working day was coming to a close and the temperature was showing no sign of dropping, more and more locals arriving to blitz away the stresses of the week with a soothing swim.
After a few haphazard laps, I lay down on my towel along a low wall and allowed myself to dry in the June sun. My chest heaved with the effort of my swims here and at Cirencester, both having been far closer to a workout than the swims in Devon a week before. But that was what I loved about this whole thing – the sheer difference of every dip. In the space of a week I had been cooled off in a raging Dartmoor river, swum in the azure waters of a faraway estuary, been battered by the surf of the Atlantic and swum in a series of beautiful outdoor pools. The spread of swimming options made me happy. There was of course a tinge of melancholy to all of this. Roger hadn’t got to see these changes happen. He had died just as people were coming round to the idea of wild swimming not being a subversive activity. I knew that if he’d been sunbathing here with me, or more likely swimming a ‘token mile’ while I marvelled at his stamina, he would have been delighted with such progress.
By now there was no excuse for me not to swim every day. The days were long and bright and the sun was warm from 6 a.m. I had built trips to Highgate men’s pond into my routine, but now it was open I started using the mixed pond as my moat instead, delighting in being there before anyone else on scorching hot days and being home and hosed by 10 a.m. The only thing that could have made the routine better would have been a house overlooking Hampstead Heath.
Every morning I’d take
the long walk from Kentish Town up the hill and onto the Heath, past the tennis courts alive with Murray wannabes thwacking balls as if they were knocking up at Wimbledon, and on over Parliament Hill. The long view south across the city was always hazy, a nasty smog clinging to the Thames and obscuring the Sussex hills. Dog walkers and runners paraded up to the viewpoint while I took the briefest of glances at London before hurrying downhill to my date with the water.
Swimming at this popular place on a June morning, with only the local mallards and the lifeguards for company, was heaven. There was something marvellous about jumping in and swimming out to the far rope, knowing that within three or four hours the pond and its narrow bank would be teeming with people desperate to cool off and escape the mugginess of London in high summer.
Pushing my head into the deep green water and watching the air bubbles surface, I thought back to my trips here last summer, when Molly and I had queued to get into the water. Everything was so different earlier in the day. Not necessarily better, but certainly more peaceful and more conducive to deep, meditative contemplation. Each morning swim set me up for the day and got me dreaming of upcoming trips to Roger’s chosen Waterlog waterholes.
On the days I couldn’t make it all the way north to Hampstead, I’d struggle out of bed at 6 a.m. and cycle the five minutes from my home to Brockwell Lido for a few short laps. The vibe there was altogether more serious, twenty or so early risers quietly steaming back and forth and getting their exercise in before decamping to the office. But at either place I left with the sense of being restored to my senses, my wilder, anxious edges smoothed like a pebble on a riverbed. Coming home I felt relaxed, but energised.
Boarding the train alone at Paddington, I had worked myself up into a real state about the day’s impending swim. I thought back to the dips I’d enjoyed with all my friends in recent months and felt sad about not having anyone else to share this trip with. It was the first one I’d done alone outside London since I’d broken my wrist. Without anyone else to talk to as the train clattered west and on towards Bristol Temple Meads, I allowed my mind to race away with itself. Why was I doing this anyway? Roger had done it and done it better, so why was I bothering? Who really cared about such a wasteful adventure? Shouldn’t I be at home doing something more productive?