by Joe Minihane
He’d tried it twice. The first time, the coastguard had stopped him mid-swim, ordering him back to dry land on what was initially meant to be a ‘dry run’ from Polruan on one side to Readymoney Cove on the other. The second time, he swam in the lee of an escort boat for protection, going one way and then the other before being collared by the authorities just as he was about to emerge victorious, receiving a telling-off that was ‘the nautical equivalent of letting you off with a caution’.
My stamina and fitness had certainly improved over two years of tailing Roger. I was able to swim further, had more energy and had a far better sense of physical well-being than when I had first set out. But my willingness to take bold risks was still low, especially in the wake of what I’d seen at Gullet Quarry. However, it seemed that Roger’s determination to get across this deep, beautiful harbour had inspired some fellow swimmers to do something a bit more organised. A week before mine and Molly’s arrival the locals had held their sixth annual Fowey Harbour Swim, tacking out from the Town Quay to Whitehouse, a kilometre swim in the Deakin tradition.
To be honest, I was relieved at the thought of not undertaking such a long swim, even though I could now add Fowey to Jura and the Medway to my growing list of Waterlog swims I hadn’t faithfully recreated. It was late afternoon, and I consoled myself with the fact that even if we had attempted a return trip to Polruan, it would have been dark by the time we got back.
As we reached the water I began to realise what Roger meant when he said of Fowey, ‘The moment you go on, or in, the water, you’re on stage.’ Houses, hotels, pubs and flats were piled on top of each other, reaching high up into the narrow valley and turning the harbour into a watery amphitheatre. I thought of the coastguard, my usual fears of offending authority whipping up my anxiety, despite my boldness in Winchester. I kept these worries to myself. Molly and I peered over the wall by the yacht club and realised that we were going to have to look for a more secluded spot to swim, away from the watchful gaze of tourists and locals.
We didn’t have to go far. Walking down a high-walled, narrow lane, we emerged round the back of the club, finding a public landing place nestled into the rocks down a steep set of steps. It shelved quickly into the inviting azure waters. Best of all, only those in boats, or staring at us through binoculars far off in Polruan, could see us. The windows of the adjacent houses all seemed to point in different directions as we scrambled out of our clothes and into our swimming kit.
The barnacle-encrusted rocks dug deep into the balls of my feet, and I let out a small, pathetic series of ‘ows’ as I tiptoed towards the water and lowered myself in. It was deliciously cold and so clear that I could see shoals of small fish swim deep below me as I floated out into the harbour.
We stuck close to the shore and watched as RIBs zipped in from the Atlantic, before swimming as far as the nearest boat, Dell Buoy, moored fifty metres or so from where we’d got into the water. Despite the easy, shelving entrance, the harbour appeared to deepen suddenly and I felt lifted by the cool, salty water. It was a pleasing change from the murk of the Severn a week earlier.
I took the lazy honk of the Polruan ferry as my cue to get out, scratching my legs on the rocks as I made an ungainly exit, all the while watched by Pop, a black Labrador who had come with her owner to the public landing place to watch the sunset. She sniffed around my wet shorts as they flopped from beneath my towel, watching intently as I pulled on my underpants back to front.
Any pangs of guilt for not following Roger’s movements to the letter had been swept away with the outgoing tide. I had to remind myself that this was not about emulation, but experience, as happy thoughts of wild swimming replaced the darker ones of the week before at Gullet Quarry. Breaking my daydream, Molly chivvied me along. We were now in a race against the setting sun, a second swim in the nearby Helford Passage pencilled in before dark.
We ran back up to the high car park, licking ice creams for sustenance, cramming our bags onto the back seat before tearing off on Roger’s trail. The tone for the next few days had been set. Drive, swim, run; drive, swim, relax. I wasn’t quite sure this was how Roger would have gone about it, but time was precious, the weather clearly enjoying its last burst of sunny abandon before packing up for the winter.
The sun was squeezing its final rays of the day through low, greying cloud as we reached the village of Durgan, the Helford River placid below us. It felt like a scene out of Hardy, albeit a lot further west: stone cottages, a small beach, a young family playing in the sand. The day had started with us battling through traffic on the clogged streets of south London, so it was apt to end it here, the complete antithesis of the capital’s relentless buzz.
I could pick out every sound and count them on one hand: our heavy footsteps on the little road; the yapping bark of a dog; the puttering of a boat’s engine as it inched out over the river. The river itself was silent. It didn’t lap on the beach or create waves. I thought of the crash and churn of Bamburgh and the galumphing rollers at Dungeness. Swimming around Britain was a way of witnessing these islands’ continual change. No two swims were ever the same.
The fading sun was pushing the temperature down fast, so there was no time to waste. We squirmed back into our now wet swimming things and strode out into the river, the deep green of the oaks and Scots pines which lined the high banks reflecting far out into the channel. Roger spoke of this being an almost tropical swim, like breaststroking through the Limpopo, and it was easy to see why. I had never seen a body of water in this country look so tantalising or foreign.
The dark sand gave way beneath my feet and I was soon swimming hard out to the nearest boat, the large pink orange buoy beneath its prow seeming like the ideal place for a mid-swim breather. I clung on, let my legs fall and looked upstream. Huge Scots pines hung suspended from the cliffs, ripped up roots and all, tumbling down towards the beach. At high tide the water would have touched the tendrils of their tops. I imagined swimming through them, the scratch of the pines on my back as the water rose and fell around me.
I was brought back to the present by the chill of the Helford nipping at my fingers, breaking my reverie and sending me off on an aimless, final swim of the day, around boats and over onto my back for a long look at the setting sun and the river’s wide opening, away and out into the Atlantic.
The waft of cooking burgers reached my nose from the beach, the same family from earlier having a barbecue in the shelter of the high wall which ran along the back of the sand. Aside from the ice cream at Fowey, I hadn’t eaten since scoffing a disappointing service station sandwich at midday. I was ravenous.
Molly and I eased our way back to shore, stroking the water as we stood and waded towards our pile of clothes and bags. On his long swim here, Roger spoke of the same far-away feel which I had experienced as I dived in, and I was pleased that aside from the fallen trees, little had seemed to change in this remote place. The real world and its attendant problems seemed a long way off as my endorphin rush set in, quickly followed by some pleasant post-swim shivers.
As we put on layers and rubbed our arms for warmth, talking about dinner and our route for the next day, a hand appeared between us, proffering half a burger each.
‘We had a spare one.’
As after-swim treats go, a freshly cooked, handmade burger is up there with a hot cup of tea and a nap on a riverbank. I watched as Molly wavered, hunger flashing in her eyes, her vegetarianism all set to be broken before she demurred. Shaking with cold and grinning in elation, I took both halves and offered greedy thanks as I scarfed them one after the other, watching the chef of our impromptu meal wander back to the barbecue, from where her partner gave us a thumbs up. Their daughter ran across the sand, followed by their Jack Russell at her heels. I felt a rising sense of contentment as I sat down and watched the sun drop over the Helford River, a perfect swimming afternoon complete.
I had read much about the tidal pool at Treyarnon, sitting high above Constantine Bay, a natural swim
ming pool so clear and soothing that its fans never wanted to go back to the chlorinated lanes of their local pool. Roger had visited on a wet summer afternoon, the rain teeming down as he clambered towards the water and peeled off Gore-Tex before swimming with a black Labrador called Moll.
For us, though, rested after our long drive and double dip at Fowey and Durgan, the temperature was comfortably in the mid-twenties, the sound of The Beach Boys’ ‘Feel Flows’ catching the wind as it played out over the youth hostel café’s outdoor speakers. All felt breezy and chilled, surfers making their way out from the beach while families set up for the day, busting out windbreaks and industrial-sized cool boxes. Despite the school holidays being over, there was a distinct midsummer atmosphere that slowed our pace as we followed the coastal path north.
We were worried we might miss the pool, but as we climbed higher and turned the corner it reared up, perched above the lapping waves of the Atlantic, a perfect swimming hole. Snorkellers swam in random patterns across its glassy surface, while a man in garish orange trunks stood poised on a low rock, readying himself for a shallow dive. I heard a light splash and saw his feet disappear as we began to pick our way down the cliffs.
The tide was on the turn and we knew that if we didn’t get in immediately, the pool would soon be overwhelmed, our chance of losing our tidal pool virginity gone for another twelve hours. By then it would be dark and we would be on the other side of the county, seeking out more of Roger’s swims.
The long summer had worked its magic here and the water was warm, far more so than the nippy Helford River and even the estuary at Fowey. As Roger says, the fact that tidal pools are ‘renewed by the moon twice a day’ means they are able to heat up far more than the sea, away as they are from the attentions of crashing waves for hours at a time.
After a day spent sitting in the car followed by two relaxing swims, I felt in need of some more strenuous exercise, and swam a few hard lengths of the forty-foot pool, its depth and the occasional sway of the encroaching tide meaning there was nowhere for me to stop and rest. My limbs screamed before I stopped dead in the middle of the pool, put on my snorkel and lay face down, star-fish fashion, the only sound my Darth Vader-like breath echoing around the mask. I kept a keen eye out for shellfish and starfish proper, but saw nothing. I didn’t really care. I had found what was surely one of Cornwall’s finest swimming spots and was happy to let it soak deep into me.
I looked up to find Molly sitting on the pool’s edge, speaking with two fellow swimmers, decked out in wetsuits and peering with great concern into the clear water.
‘Joe, have you seen a wedding ring?’
I felt instinctively for my own, found it there and shook my head.
‘It’s just this guy’s lost his.’
He looked stricken, his wife behind him.
Even in a pool this clear, the chances of finding a wedding ring were about as likely as a warm wild swim in December. It deepened fast, large pebbles and seaweed obscuring the bottom. By now the waves were beginning to crash over the rocks which protected the pool at low tide, the tilt and sway of the ocean causing swimmers to bob noticeably. Staying afloat was going to be hard enough without looking for lost jewellery. I thought back to my own panic about losing my wedding ring on the Great Ouse. I could understand the poor man’s devastation, especially as finding his was going to prove an impossible task. I didn’t tell him it would be OK. It wasn’t my place to make such assumptions.
The man, his wife and children left, disconsolate and empty-handed, while Molly and I made a cursory attempt to find his ring. It soon became apparent it was never going to happen, and so we set off on a last guilty lap of the pool. I clenched the fingers of my left hand together tightly, pushed my wedding ring hard onto my knuckle and thought of Keeley. I hadn’t taken it off since I thought I had lost it and I dreaded the idea of losing it here.
The rising tide was starting to inch closer to our dry clothes, so we swam to the water’s edge, pulling out and changing as we clambered up towards the clifftop. A pair of swimmers passed us in the opposite direction, a father and son. By now the waves had taken over the entire pool, but still the dad dived in, egging his son on as we looked back in horror.
Despite this being my first tidal pool, I knew the basic rule was to bail once the waves breached its walls. But the young lad bellyflopped in and the pair of them swam against the waves. They struggled to get out, high-fiving when they did so and allaying my anxiety.
But I felt it was foolish for them to have been so cavalier, even if the weather was good and there were plenty of people around. I bemoaned their behaviour to Molly as we sat on a bench and drank tea, more Beach Boys tunes drifting out from the café behind us. Perhaps I should have enjoyed the relaxed vibe a little more, but I was becoming increasingly conscious of the needless risks some swimmers seemed to take.
After Roger had swum in the pool at Treyarnon he had met the lifeguards on the nearby beach, who’d told him about a group of drunken swimmers getting into difficulty during a midnight dip. Those who had saved them ‘blamed … indoor swimming and warm-water “fun pools” for preventing young swimmers from learning a proper respect for the sea.’ Roger said they swam ‘with no thought of self-reliance’, thinking the lifeguards would always be on hand to save them from the ‘giant fun pool’ that was the Atlantic Ocean.
I looked up this passage while I sat fuming. I had seen and heard of the same behaviour throughout my trip. The line between derring-do and stupidity is a thin one, one which Roger himself doubtless crossed a few times and which had often led to overcautious signage and rules, as I’d seen first hand at Beezley Falls. But I still marvelled at those who didn’t seem to think before they got in, as if nothing could possibly go wrong.
I managed to calm myself after a few minutes of mindless chatter, remembering that it wasn’t my concern, and took a last look down at our pool before we left. By now it no longer existed; rather it was hidden beneath the ocean and replenishing itself, getting ready for the next influx of swimmers.
After a lunch of cheese and onion pasties and overpriced lemonade on the harbour wall in Padstow, we drove an hour west to Godrevy Point, where the Red River slips into the Atlantic Ocean. The place was full of surfers catching the last waves of the late afternoon, wading through the polluted river, trailing their longboards with them through the shallow, nominally fresh water.
I was all ready to double-dip here, to wade into the wide pool which sits high above the back of the beach, a neat lip providing a handy resting place to perch and stare out to sea. But as we passed the old stone chimney stack of the disused tin mine and crossed a small wooden bridge, the water looked less than inviting. It wasn’t quite the bright red of old, and I had heard second hand that the quality had improved in recent years, with insects and fish returning to a river that was once polluted with dilute arsenic. But to my eyes it still looked fetid and grim. A yellowish scum licked the orange sandy banks, the water tinged an unwelcoming shade of terracotta.
Molly wasn’t keen, and after soaking in the clean salty pool at Treyarnon, the thought of sinking into this grimy river didn’t appeal to me much either. We left the river behind and walked down to the beach where, despite the lifeguards packing up for the day, surfers were piling in, a series of high white breakers making for perfect conditions to go out on the board.
We waded in, the gradual entry tough after the swift baptism in the tidal pool earlier in the day. We were the only swimmers, and dived under waves, swimming fast to get amongst the neoprene-clad surfers. One cursed his luck as he fell off the back of a wave, while I kept a close watch so as not to be taken out by any of the more professional bunch who stood up with imperious ease and shot back to shore.
The soporific drive along the coast from Padstow was soon worked out of my system and I swam in long back and forths, battling to get to the rear of waves before trying to ride them back to calmer water. I could feel the strong pull of the tide beneath me and w
as careful to stay within my depth. Caution was beginning to override everything I did in the water, a slight swell of worry flaring up after what I’d seen at Treyarnon. I tried to push these feelings down and enjoy the grey waves on my skin, instead focusing on how they made me happy and cold at the same time.
We were both verging on hysterical when we came out, taking an age to get dressed and finding ourselves chatting unmemorable nonsense, the witterings of two swimmers who’d overindulged for two days running.
I felt no regret at not bathing in the Red River as we recrossed it and walked back to the car; it looked even less appealing now the light was beginning to fade. Vindication came when we got back to Molly’s parents’ house in Falmouth and read up further. It turned out that two storm water overflows emptied into the Red River’s catchment area. The sewage treatment works at nearby Hayle emptied out into the ocean west of Godrevy Head just up the coast. What’s more, two months before our visit the beach had been closed three times by the council, after the sewer overflows spilled into the Red River and across the beach into the sea following heavy rainfall. It seemed that despite talk of the river being cleaner than it had ever been, it was still not somewhere worth swimming.
The thing is, the swim off the beach had been first class, a proper sea dip to help blitz the mind of any worries about swimmers not taking precautions and the increasingly nagging thoughts about how I would cope once this retracing of Roger’s journey was complete. But that didn’t stop me from standing under a hot shower for fifteen minutes following our sewage discovery, skin red under the scalding water, in an attempt to wash off any pesky poison.
The following morning, skin seemingly free of any sewage-borne diseases, we drove from Falmouth to Porthcurno in the far west of Cornwall. It was still scorching, summer refusing to quit as we walked down to the beach along a vertiginous path, past the old telegraph hut where communications cables from North America had made landfall.