by Joe Minihane
Instead, I alighted on a plan to swim in Llyn Cwm Bychan, the largest of the lakes Roger visited. I started researching plans for a long solo train trip, a six-hour mission followed by the need to track down local taxis and traipse into the hills with camping and swimming kit strapped to my back.
I was in the pub one evening with Joe, Tom and James and mentioned this significant undertaking. James put his pint down, sucked the foam from his upper lip and piped up.
‘I’ll take you if you like.’
This was taking the rides I’d been given by friends and family to a whole other level. Usually I would take the train to a station close to the destination where they would pick me up and ferry me to my chosen swimming spot. This time, though, James, who made it abundantly clear he would not be getting in with me, was willing to drive over 200 miles for my benefit. Once again, the journey was reminding me how good my friends were to me. James was soon leaving London to move to New York, and I knew this would be a great chance for us to hang out properly before he headed off.
It was a grey day as we drove north out of London. The forecast was appalling, with showers due to sweep in from the Irish Sea. We spent the night in Chester, ready for an early-morning assault on a country my predecessor said was ‘stiff with magic’.
It certainly felt mystical the next morning as we crossed the border, a thick fog clinging to the hills, low trees rearing up over the road. The occasional glow of fog lamps was the only reminder of other human life close by. Not coming here at the height of summer was beginning to look like a bigger mistake with every mile we covered.
Out west, though, on Barmouth Sands, we watched as the sun slipped through the low clouds, burning off the mist and opening out huge views to sea. We dashed up the coast towards Llanbedr, where we turned off and followed the crashing Afon Artro upstream. The river tumbled beneath old stone bridges and over huge boulders. I thought back to the rushing waters of the West Dart and began to grow itchy for water, for its cold sting on my skin.
The road narrowed, grass and gravel scattered across its high crown, turning hard away from the river before swinging high over a final hill, Llyn Cwm Bychan, below us. I could see Afon Artro sliding from its western end, skittering away to where we had just driven and on to the sea. White-tipped crests dotted its lower reaches, the wind creating unrepeatable patterns across its surface. Rain fell lightly on the windscreen.
‘You’re actually going to swim in that?’ said James, as he stopped the car so we could take a better look.
Any excitement about getting in as we’d passed the gushing river had evaporated, quickly replaced by fear. Roger swam here on a golden summer morning, sliding in from a sheep-mown peninsula and pushing out into the depths, limbs loosening after a night under canvas. My version was going to be very different, and having been driven here all the way from London, I couldn’t just baulk and turn back.
The lake appeared to shallow as we reached the campsite at its eastern shores, reeds sticking up just above its surface. It wasn’t whipped up into quite the same frenzy here, the shelter of Carreg-y-saeth affording me some slight protection from being slapped about the face by angry Welsh water.
I changed into wetsuit, boots, hat and gloves in a mossy wood, the rain now tumbling fast as I threw my leg over a stone wall and lowered myself into the lake, James wrapped up in a waterproof coat and watching from beneath a red and white golf umbrella. The cold gripped at my ankles and sent a shiver through my body. It made the marshes at Blythburgh feel tropical by comparison.
I waded out, the lake’s bed grassy and springy beneath my feet. I walked 200 metres towards its centre before I realised that it wasn’t going to get any deeper and splashed into the fresh, freezing water. My hands were numb, but I swam on in a long line, the slopes of Carreg-y-saeth glowering up ahead.
The passages in Waterlog about the Rhinnogs are full of joy and energy, of bounding between one swimming hole and another, skin by turns seething and tingling. This felt very different. It was a battle to stay warm, let alone look up and enjoy the beauty and isolation of the place. I forced myself to stay in for longer, lying on my back and sinking the crown of my head until the water lapped around my ears.
Yes, there was magic here. I could feel it, as if I had been pulled to this place rather than followed a road to its shores. I imagined the water falling from the sky dropping into the narrow streams which fell fast down from the Rhinnogs, before slipping quietly into Llyn Cwm Bychan. Rather than me going in search of it, I felt it flowing towards me.
As ever, thoughts of Roger were never far away, as if he were scampering between stream and cwm away up in the hills, always in search of the next swim. I had followed him to the very edges of Britain and found his swimming holes to be largely untouched, but offering wholly different experiences to those he had encountered. No water was ever the same in any one place; everywhere was being renewed and reborn all the time.
I felt those differences keenly in Llyn Cwm Bychan, the weather throwing everything into sharp relief. I swam and waded back towards the woods cold and high, a burning sense of satisfaction that I had come to Wales at a different, less welcoming time of year, but still found water that was magical to sink into.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
April
Walnut Tree Farm, Suffolk
It was the kind of day that seemed inconceivable in darkest January. Hazy clouds bled at the edges of a huge sky, rising to a deep, reassuring blue. The temperature read 18.5°C on the car’s dashboard. Dad and I were driving across Suffolk on the warmest day of the year so far, the first yellow sunbursts of rapeseed flecking the fields as we drew ever closer to Mellis, the moat and the final swim of this long journey.
In the nights before this trip, I had dreamt about the moat. It was long and stretched for a kilometre or more, reed beds lining its banks and a boardwalk meandering across its narrow point. Swimmers pushed themselves in wayward strokes in all directions. I stood on, watching, ready to dive in, when I rolled over and woke up.
And now we were nearly there at last. It was almost ninety minutes from my parents’ home in Essex, our ride soundtracked by the squabbling of politicians on the general election trail. As we turned off the main road and trundled across Mellis Common, I had a keen sense of this being the culmination of a far longer ride, one which had started with those first tentative swims across London from Tooting Bec Lido to Highgate men’s pond and gone onwards to the River Lark, across Jura, down through Fladbury, west to Dartmoor, Cornwall and Scilly, and north to Wales and the Rhinnogs.
I had first laid plans to swim in the moat a year into the journey, but my trussed-up wrist ensured it didn’t happen. It wasn’t until over a year later that I once again spoke with Jasmin, who bought Walnut Tree Farm from Rufus, Roger’s son and her school friend, the year after Roger passed away. We settled on a November date, but the hefty slap of a wet winter left us aiming for spring and better weather. I had passed the colder months happily, writing up earlier swims, revelling in memories of those dips, the encounters I had had, the relationships that were now bound closer thanks to my undertaking of this long journey, even the wrist break on the way to a swimming pool that had inadvertently set me on a path to finding a healthier, more rounded cure for my anxiety by seeing Mark. What had begun as a trip with a narrow focus had become something much more holistic. I had learnt that there were many ways to fix myself and keep my mind at peace. Swimming, therapy and time with friends were all of equal importance.
Now, as the temperature clicked over to 20°C and we turned up the narrow, unsealed track towards the farm, I couldn’t have been happier at how things had turned out. Not only would my journey finish where Roger’s had started, I’d also get to enjoy my first outdoor swim of the year in nascent summer weather. Dad was excited too. I’d spent many evenings over winter telling him about my journey and felt bad that he hadn’t come on more swims with me. We’d only managed a few dips in Lyme Regis together the previous summer, e
ven though he’d been a real help in Jaywick. When he offered to drive me to Walnut Tree Farm and swim with me, I was delighted.
I did warn him, however, that the water was not going to be warm. A couple of days before heading to Suffolk, Jasmin wrote to me: ‘Our first Easter here I went swimming in the moat. It was painfully, panic-inducingly cold. Do you have a wetsuit?’
Of course I did. But this was the last place I could use it, surely. Packing that morning, I shoved the neoprene into my rucksack just in case, and covered it with other essentials: shorts, notepad, my tatty copy of Waterlog.
We parked up by the old barn and tumbled out of Dad’s hatchback, sweaty and desperate for water. A deep bark emanated from the farmhouse. Branches and kindling were piled high over the chassis of an old baby-blue Alfa Romeo. The steps which ran alongside the outside of the barn creaked and Jasmin appeared, walking down and offering her hand to Dad and me.
‘You found it OK, then?’ she said, leading us along the side of the house and out onto the lawn. It glowed a verdant green, the remainder of the previous night’s dew glistening on its surface where it rolled gently towards the moat.
The bark became louder as we reached the heavy old kitchen door.
‘You’re OK with dogs, yeah?’ said Jasmin, leaving no time for a reply before Hercules, a hulking delight of a Labrador cross bounded out towards us. Jasmin grabbed his collar just in time as Dad and I knelt to ruffle his thick-set neck.
Jasmin brewed tea and collected cups onto a tray as Dad and I looked around, peering at bookshelves and running our hands over exposed, ancient beams. Herc sat on an old sofa, upright, imperious. This was very much Jasmin’s home, not Roger’s, and that made me happy. She had made what was once his, hers. I realised I had perhaps done something similar with Waterlog.
We drank tea outside on a stripped-back bench, looking out over the lawn, the moat just about visible below its banks. Unlike in my dream, it wasn’t long, bordered with reeds or blessed with a boardwalk. I had known all of this anyway, but it was reassuring to see that it was every bit as simple and beautiful as Roger had described it.
Jasmin told us how she had come to live here. How she and her husband Titus used to visit as teenagers and sleep in the shepherds’ huts which dotted the fields of the farm, swimming in the moat when the mood took them. She explained how they’d decided to leave London and come to this rural corner of Suffolk to bring up their children. They had converted the old barn into a workspace where Jasmin created her art and jewellery. The loft space above was a bolthole, a bed nestled into the eaves with a view across the moat, blue tits nesting in the high branches of the trees which grew up alongside it.
I loved how Jasmin and Titus had made Walnut Tree Farm their own while staying true to the aesthetic which Roger had created when he rebuilt the place in the 1960s. There was still no central heating, and much of my predecessor’s carefully collected junk could be found lying around if you looked carefully. A vintage Citroën was buried beneath a vast growth of brambles. An old bath had been pulled from a hedgerow and used for the new hot outdoor shower which Jasmin had installed under the barn’s staircase as a birthday gift to Titus.
When I heard about this particular addition, my ears pricked up. Any plans I had had about slipping into the wetsuit were now shoved to the back of my mind. A hot shower after a cold swim is one of life’s great pleasures, and one I was not going to turn down.
While Jasmin and Dad chatted, I stared across the lawn at the water. At the very last, I had managed to find some symmetry in this haphazard retracing of Roger’s swimming journey. An idea which had come to my predecessor while working his way through countless lengths of the moat had set him off on a long trip starting here in Mellis. That same idea, which had struck such a chord within me that I had wanted to find my own way into it, was about to come full circle in the place where it had all begun. The sense of connection I had felt earlier as we pulled up the drive pulsed inside me. I stood and declared that I was going swimming.
I walked down to the edge of the moat while Dad went back to the car and returned in a pair of natty blue and white striped swimming shorts, towels under his arm, his belly pasty white. The water looked deep and inviting. There was no breeze.
I struggled out of my trousers and pulled my neoprene gloves and shoes from my bag. Jasmin laughed at these accessories and my firmly held belief that they would stave off the chill. I dipped an ungloved hand into the water and winced.
‘It told you it was cold.’
‘There’s no way I’m putting that on, not here,’ I said, pointing to the wetsuit which was poking out from the top of my rucksack.
‘Oh, Roger wore wetsuits all the time. Way more than he let on, too.’
This was not the time to learn that all those icy swims of the past few years could have been offset with neoprene. That the guilt I’d felt whenever I’d pulled it on had been unnecessary.
Jasmin plunged her arm into the water and found the top of the old ladder which Roger had submerged when he first started swimming in the moat. I dropped my foot where she pointed and found the first, weed-slicked rung. I sat on the bank and felt the water quickly cool my legs. Its depth dropped to ten feet almost immediately, so there was no time to hang around and get used to it. I began a countdown from three and pushed forward on two, ploughing out a fast breaststroke as the moat lifted me up and away on my final swim.
It was cold, but delicious. I knew I would be happy and high when I scrambled out, skin tingling. I heard a splash and a huff behind me and turned to find Dad following me along the middle of the moat. He flashed me a quick grin, the dark gap of a missing molar the same colour as the water.
As he pulled himself out, having been in for a brief couple of minutes, I pushed on for the far end, where the moat grew silty and shrubs hung low over its surface. My bow wave slapped gently on the grassy bank. I looked across at the house and thought back to that very first dip in Hampstead mixed pond with Keeley, the happy mix of terror and elation as I slid forward and offered myself up to the head waters of the old River Fleet. I remembered the crushing low of not being able to swim after I had broken my wrist and the swells of anxiety and worry that swimming outdoors had helped me to begin combating in the years since I had set out on Roger’s trail.
Calm settled over me as I realised that all I needed to focus on was this moment, the full expression of my long kick and the wide sweep of my arms. I turned onto my back and allowed the water to bear me up and floated, the rush of the moat’s water in my ears. I smiled at the memory of Mark’s words, of remembering to let myself bob along as life floated around me. I thought back to the start of my journey, the anxiety I had dealt with, the way I had worked myself into a state about not living up to the expectations I had set myself. I thought too about the worries I had about this trip ending and how I would feel when it did, and remembered another Kerouac line from The Dharma Bums: ‘When you get to the top of the mountain, keep climbing.’
I thought back to those months when this journey felt as if it would never end, when more and more swims seemed to reveal themselves, as if Roger were daring me to keep searching his pages for more. I had realised then, for my own good, that I had had no choice but to finish.
This trip had developed into something so much more than going and swimming where my predecessor had. It was the start of a healing process, one I knew now would never end, even once I’d emerged from the water this last time. I felt pride at having come this far and excitement about what was next, whatever it was. There would be more swims, more times with friends and people I loved. There was no end, only beginnings and possibilities.
As I floated on, I thought too of all of the life in the moat. The newts and larvae buried deep beneath me. The kingfisher which Jasmin had told me was an intermittent visitor, hunting on amphibious treats. The birds which wheeled above it. The clacking great tits, whirring goldfinches, the unidentifiable chaos of birdsong which rose in my ears as I allowed my
legs to fall, before I spun around and made my way back to the ladder.
But most of all I thought about Roger. How many lengths of the moat would he have had to do, to complete the mile he tried to swim each day? And what would he make of this retracing of his swimming journey? Had I done him justice? I knew that it didn’t really matter, but I hoped so nonetheless.
My thoughts continued to wander off along happy tangents as I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and plunged my head under. I emerged cleansed, my hair slick and my mind quiet. I felt for the first rung of the ladder as Dad’s hand reached to pull me clear.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Travelling for Floating was an experience that changed my life. It also reignited old friendships and sparked new ones. My eternal gratitude goes to those who drove me across the UK, often taking time out of busy schedules to indulge my swimming whims.
Thanks to Tom Sutton for his steadfast friendship, encouragement and critical scrutiny of early drafts of the text. Molly Naylor, for her kindness, spectacular driving skills and ability to get me into some less than alluring stretches of water with a swift put-down about wetsuits.
Thanks to everyone who opened up their homes and welcomed me, especially George and the gang at Fladbury, Lucy Moy-Thomas and Jasmin Rowlandson at Walnut Tree Farm.
Much love to James Holland, Joe Svetlik, Tom Bailey, Tim Clare, Joe Dunthorne, Luke Wright, Emily Kindleysides, Yanny Mac, Suz Close, Megan Quinn and Amy Liptrot for joining me in the water when it wasn’t always as enticing as I made out it would be.
Thanks to my agents Georgina Capel and Rachel Conway for their good cheer and helpful guidance. To Robert Macfarlane for his encouragement and enthusiasm. To Peter Mayer, Gesche Ipsen and all at Duckworth Overlook for their help bringing the book to fruition.
Special thanks to my uncle, David Parkin. Your enthusiasm for this project’s most daunting swims, planning long jaunts through western Scotland and northern England, not to mention your willingness to drop everything at a moment’s notice, helped turn this whole thing from a passionate hobby into the book it is today.