By far the most lethal place in the Oxford area is further downstream at Sandford Lock. ‘The pools of Sandford Lasher, in the backwater by the lock, are dangerous for bathing in, and have acquired an ill name from the many fatal accidents which have happened there,’ explained the 1893 Oarsman’s and Angler’s Map of the River Thames from Its Source to London Bridge. ‘The pool under Sandford Lasher . . . is a very good place to drown yourself in,’ comments the narrator of Three Men in a Boat, while Dickens’s Dictionary of the Thames notes, ‘It is notorious to all rowing men and habitués of the river.’ The Pool of Tears in Alice in Wonderland was a result of Carroll’s visit to Sandford, while Michael Llewelyn Davies, one of the inspirations for Peter Pan, drowned here in 1921. The lasher is described on modern maps as a treacherous weir pool with a very strong undercurrent, while the lock has the deepest drop on the non-tidal Thames.
While people still swim at Tumbling Bay and Port Meadow today, bathing in the Thames around Oxford is the subject of repeated warnings in the local press. It may once have been normal for schoolchildren to be taken to the river to learn to swim, a basic skill that everyone needed to know, but according to the media today it’s a dangerous pursuit. ‘The deadly lure of deep water during sunny spells has once again proved fatal,’ reported the Oxford Times in 2000, following ‘a long list of tragedies’. Youngsters are told ‘not to indulge in the dangerous “sport” of jumping into the water from river bridges’, and the Environment Agency (EA) estimates that ‘between 50 and 100 children a day can be found playing unaccompanied along the Thames’ as a whole. Swimming, it cautions, should always take place under adult supervision and ‘preferably in a swimming pool’.
The EA, established in 1996, is the navigational authority on the Thames, operating under legislation that goes back to Magna Carta, and owns the forty-one locks on the upper Thames, where swimming is banned, as it is in weirs. It is responsible for registering craft and generally managing any river activity. But Russell Robson, Waterways Team Leader, stresses that there is a free right to use the Thames: ‘we are not the owner of the river or of the water. The riparian landowners have rights to the banks and bed where their land adjoins the river, so if a house has a garden leading down to the riverbank then they own that bank. If you want to dive in we have no powers to stop anyone, but a landowner can restrict access and if there is damage then it’s trespass.’
While he says that in general people have become ‘softer’ with the introduction of indoor pools, there has also been a growth in mass-participation events on the Thames. ‘People see it as a fantastic backdrop for their event. You get the choice between an idyllic, tree-lined, sun-warmed river, or a twenty-five-metre-long municipal pool with hair floating in it. People have always paddled from the banks, fished, bathed, cleansed and played in it. The perception is it’s getting cleaner, which it is. I grew up in southeast London in the 1970s and the Thames was a floating rubbish dump. Today it’s an ever-improving environment for wildlife, but it’s not bathing water.’ The three main risks are the cold, flooding and possible infection, but ‘if people take precautions there is no reason why they shouldn’t swim’.
Yet while the EA monitors ecological and biological quality, there are no official bathing waters on the Thames, so it doesn’t test for E. coli or strep. ‘To be brutally honest, it wouldn’t pass bathing water standards,’ says Russell; ‘there is land drainage, water for agriculture and drinking water, power industries and wastewater discharge. Climate change means we have warmer summers and people are attracted to riverbanks. It’s a free activity and it’s more popular now, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe. People still go and swim at Tumbling Bay, although it’s not open any more, and there is a drowning there every few years.’
Perhaps the most dangerous activity on the Thames is jumping from bridges, which Russell says goes on all over the place with at least one incident every year. The annual May Day tradition of jumping off Magdalen Bridge into the Cherwell has led to numerous injuries. Recently the coroner at Oxford ruled on a case where a fourteen-year-old boy jumped into the Thames with his girlfriend, and hadn’t told her he couldn’t swim. ‘I’ve jumped from bridges myself and it’s great fun,’ says Russell, ‘but it’s also hazardous and I never considered that people just chuck stuff in.’ He cites stolen laptops and builders dumping debris: ‘we had twenty bags of rubble at Godstow and the diver was standing on it and the water only came to his knees.’ In the summer of 2012, the EA invited the public to Pangbourne, about twenty miles from Oxford, to watch Thames Valley Police Search and Recover divers remove hazardous materials by Whitchurch Bridge. In previous years divers had pulled out shopping trolleys, motorbikes, fridges, TVs, scooters, scaffolding and traffic cones, some firmly stuck in the riverbed. One year only a small sample of objects was recovered, partly because the diver was becoming entangled in a discarded fishing line.
The EA cites numerous possible risks associated with swimming and diving in the Thames, including falling on metal spikes, being struck by a boat or caught in a propeller, being swept along in a strong current, encountering cold water which can lead to cramp and breathing difficulties, and unstable slippery banks which can collapse suddenly. With warnings like these, no wonder people are put off and some Oxford residents, like Christopher Gray, think the idea of river swimming is crazy. ‘Though a tributary of the Thames flows at the bottom of my garden, I would never dream of swimming in it,’ he wrote in the Oxford Times, annoyed that the Daily Telegraph had just run a three-page feature on river swimming, recommending the Thames at Port Meadow and Clifton Hampden. To him this was ‘Barking mad . . . River swimming is a new faddish activity. Like motorcycling and Morris dancing, it numbers many zealots among its supporters.’
Several well-known endurance swimmers have fallen sick around Oxford, including Lewis Pugh during his 2006 trip. ‘The upper Thames was beautiful, clean and gorgeous,’ he remembers. ‘Oxford was really grotty. I ended up in hospital there, although we didn’t mention it to the press at the time. I had started vomiting late one night; I was rushed in and given antibiotics. The next morning I was totally exhausted, I only managed 400 metres that day.’
David Walliams fell sick at the end of day two as he passed Oxford and reached Abingdon. ‘I had Giardia, which people in the third world get from dirty water, and it makes you very ill with diarrhoea. It lays eggs in the lower intestine. I had antibiotics before I started, and during, and I can’t say for certain how I got it.’ Long-distance swimmer Frank Chalmers also got sick with ‘the dreaded Thames lurgy’ as he approached Oxford on his four-day swim, but despite being taken to hospital he says ‘people swim here all the time and they are fine’.
Indeed they are, and despite warnings from the EA and in the press, swimming in the Thames at Oxford is seeing something of a revival. ‘As the pound sinks and more of us stay at home instead of going abroad, such simple pleasures are being rediscovered,’ says Chris Koenig from the Oxford Times. ‘After all, the weather is getting hotter and the rivers cleaner.’ Swimming teacher Dee Keane has lived in Oxford for thirty years yet didn’t swim in the Thames until she took part in a full-moon swim with the Outdoor Swimming Society (OSS) downstream near South Stoke. ‘There was thunder and lightning and we were all a bit hyped up. We assembled in a field and changed and then walked through the village and a mile up the towpath, just wearing costumes and goggles, and then swam back. It was dusk, around 7 or 8 p.m., and people were coming out of the pub to look at us. You could see them thinking, “Dear God, I’ve got to stop drinking.”’
The dozen or so people swam with the current and, Dee continues, ‘I remember thinking, well, I’m quite glad it’s dark and I can’t see what’s in the water, what’s down there in the murky depths. But it was quite silky, with an occasional leaf brushing past.’ As for health risks, she says statistically you’re as likely to pick up a bug or a verruca from a pool. However, she swam the Thames with her face out of the water, ‘although I spend my prof
essional life telling people not to do that because it places more stress on the back and neck. But in the Thames I was really careful not to swallow water.’
Esther Browning is another long-time Oxford resident, having arrived as an eighteen-year-old to study Human Sciences. One of the attractions was the river; she rowed for her college and was a member of the Wallingford Rowing Club, racing on the Thames as far as Putney. But then she had three children and rowing is ‘a massive time commitment’. However, she managed to complete some triathlons that included swimming in an indoor pool, and then one day she saw an advertisement for a triathlon that involved an open-water swim. ‘My big block was open water, but I felt like a bit of a fraud doing it in a pool.’ Esther lives near Newbridge, southwest of Oxford, and that’s where she first went into the Thames to swim, along with a friend – ‘I squealed in barefoot from a little mud beach, swam upstream and then back. It was a perfect summer’s day, and the water was gentle.’ She then took part in an OSS swim at Dorchester-on-Thames followed by swims at Port Meadow, Abingdon, Buckland and Wallingford. ‘All the stretches are different. North of Wolvercote is Amazonian with long branches hanging down, whereas at Newbridge it’s flat farmers’ fields.’ Then in the summer of 2012 she ‘hooked up with faster, more serious swimmers’ and now she and two other women – Kate and Katia – swim all year round. ‘Men say, “ah, it’s too cold to swim in the Thames”, but women are hardier, or women are every bit as hardy as men.’
‘People are put off by the cold of the Thames, but it’s so beautiful’: Katia Vastiau who regularly swims near Oxford with companions Esther Browning and Kate Bradley.
The three women try to swim every week, usually a 750-metre course through Abingdon. ‘As the days get darker we go there because the light from the town means you can see where you are. I’m terrified of cold water, it’s almost like I have to prove myself, but afterwards I’m always pleased. I get a kick out of making myself do it, there’s a real rush of endorphins. Before a rowing race I would feel nervous, my heart would be racing, and that’s what it’s like before swimming in the Thames. And it’s fun, we have a laugh, we wetsuit up and scamper through town. And we really laugh when we get out of the water and try to get out of our wetsuits, it’s very difficult when you’re cold. I’m surprised we haven’t been arrested for indecent exposure; you’re always baring more flesh than you intend. Kate and Katia really encouraged me, they’re really fast, and you need a group, you need companions.’
Esther says it can be quite scary in the dark with a strong current and sometimes it’s touch and go whether they will do it. The women can’t see each other, so they call out as they swim along, and while they tried wearing head torches these didn’t work well while doing front crawl. The Oxford trio post their swims on the OSS site and others join in. ‘A lot of people swim in the Thames. It’s going on all the time but the last couple of years Facebook has made it easier to hook up.’
Esther’s companion Kate Bradley first swam in the Thames in 2010 downstream at Clifton Hampden. ‘It was November, but it was incredibly warm for the time of year, about fifteen degrees. The second time there was frost on the ground and mist in the air and there were some shocked looks from the locals as we headed down to the river. There are still people who won’t go in the Thames and think it’s dirty; you could say David Walliams’ swim was bad publicity. But personally, after three years of swimming every week in the Thames, I’ve never been ill. There have been recent sewage leaks, but mainly it’s scare-mongering.’ As for other river users, ‘most rowers are friendly and fine but there’s the odd one . . . Once I nearly bumped into some and they thought we should be swimming under the trees and that we didn’t have the right to be in the river. But mostly people just say “you’re mad”. I try to be pleasant to everyone.’
Katia Vastiau, the third member of the group, first swam in the Thames two years ago. Originally from Brussels, she was a competitive indoor pool swimmer until the age of nineteen; she semi-retired from swimming, studied and had children and found there was no time for it. Then she met someone from a triathlon club who told her she should just do the swimming part. ‘People are put off by the cold of the Thames, but it’s so beautiful, we see herons and ducks and you see the edge of the river and the villages from a different angle. If you’re in a camper van you see one perspective, in the river there’s another. It’s pretty and mellow. By now we know where to get in and we know the currents, we’re not mad, we don’t just jump in, we know what we’re doing. We go on the left where there are no boats, but change if there’s a weir on the left.
‘Rowers are a problem; they don’t look where they’re going because they’re going backwards. We have bright hats and flashlights, but when we reach a corner we shout, “swimmers in the water!” There are lots of boats around Oxford. Rowers and their coaches usually say, “oh my God, you’re really brave” and are very nice. Sometimes someone might be a bit grumpy, having to reduce their stroke for five seconds. You have to keep sighting and to look at the rest of the group. We’ve never had a near miss. We have lots of chats with fishermen and people walking their kids, it’s very social.’ The women also pick up discarded packaging and plastic bottles and put them in their wetsuits because ‘we use the river; we want to help clear it up. We want to show people the Thames is there, but respect it.’
Swimming around Abingdon isn’t a new idea, and although they may not know it, the three women’s regular swims are building on a long tradition. In 1881 an official bathing place opened ‘at the back of the Island near Abingdon Lock Pool’ with floating screens moored across the back stream. Four days a week were ‘set apart for the ladies to have the exclusive right of bathing there,’ explained one newspaper. ‘We hear that a club has been formed by some ladies of the town for the purpose of learning the art of swimming.’
Abingdon was still a place for family dips in the 1960s and 1970s – as was Wallingford where, at the turn of the century, children had been taught to swim wearing safety devices attached to a rope and a stick. Tami Bowers, who was born and brought up in Abingdon, remembers swimming in the Thames when she was three or four. ‘My mum took us; she enjoyed swimming, though she wasn’t competitive. There was not a massive amount of people doing it, there was an open-air pool nearby that people went to and originally it had Thames water. There was a slight current, depending on the time of year, it seems stronger now but maybe I’m more aware. The Thames was always on my doorstep; it was a luxury I had, and a natural thing for me to swim there. At Abingdon you’re spoilt for choice.’ Tami has brought up her children, now fourteen and seventeen, to swim in the Thames, and the only experience of any illness was when her eleven-year-old Border Collie, Rebel, got Weil’s disease: ‘he spent nearly nine weeks at the vets and we didn’t think he would come out the other side. But as soon as he was well again he went back to swimming and he swam in the Thames until the day he died aged seventeen. He would run and jump in anywhere he could. He swam twice a day around Abingdon.’
Tami has taken part in mass events such as the Great London Swim, ‘but I prefer to paddle on my own, it’s me time’. However, she says anglers often don’t like open-water swimmers. ‘I’ve been catapulted with pellets and they’ve screamed at me to get out of the way. Boats don’t mind, the rowers aren’t a problem, and the fish like me, I know because I have pike nibble marks on my wetsuit which I wear in the winter.’
As I leave Oxford and take the train back to London I wonder what Charles Steedman, the Victorian author, would have made of modern-day swimmers around here. I think he would have loved it all; to know how far we’ve come, that while children may now be urged to swim indoors and many of the old bathing places have gone, the art of river swimming continues in the form of three women who swim every week in the darkness through Abingdon. We have tried out different ways to swim the Thames at Oxford, from one-off races in 1840 to four-day endurance swims fifty years later. In Victorian times ‘ladies’ were keen to learn the n
ew art; now we plunge into cold water in wetsuits. Here we are again, returning to the Thames, and as the river winds its way south into Berkshire I’m keen to know what stories the town of Reading has to tell.
4
Reading
‘It [is] as necessary that a boy should learn to swim as it [is] that he should learn to write’
Reading Swimming Club, 1897
Reading has two long, straight stretches of water, one above Caversham Bridge and the other below Caversham Lock, which may well explain why the town has one of the longest continuous traditions of Thames swimming. Regattas were held here in Victorian times, although this area of the Thames was famous then for another reason: it was where ‘baby farmer’ Amelia Dyer, eventually hanged in 1896, threw the bodies of the children she had murdered into the water. As for swimming, when the narrator of Three Men in a Boat arrived in Reading he declared ‘the river is dirty and dismal here’. But that didn’t stop bathers, although the fact they were naked, as elsewhere on the Thames, was a ‘public nuisance’, according to the press. In the summer of 1888 ‘Disgusted of Wargrave’ complained that ‘a dozen or more men and boys lark about the banks in a state of nudity’ at Reading and Caversham.
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