April 22, 2022

Wild Swimming

While we lived in England, I longed to swim, so much so that I ended up purchasing a plastic pool from Woolworths, setting it up on the tiny concrete slab that constituted the back garden of our terrace house. We lived in the Midlands, and didn’t have a car, which limited my perspective, as well as my geographical range, so that I really wasn’t aware of nearby swimming opportunities available to me, though there must have been some. We were also very broke. Once in the summer of 2003, we took the train to Skegness, which I knew about from the Adrian Mole novels, and we went swimming there. Two years later, we’d take a dip in the sea on our honeymoon in Brighton. But other than these experiences, my English life took place on dry land…save for the time we were walking through the University of Nottingham’s Jubilee Campus and I spontaneously stripped down to my skivvies and went swimming in a muddy pond.

But contrary to my experiences, England has a long and storied swimming culture (which I learned much more about in Jenny Landreth’s Swell: A Waterbiography). From lidos to the Ladies Pond on Hampstead Heath, there are plenty of places to swim, and my own swimming obsession has certainly grown out of the passion for #WildSwimming online, among UK women in particular. And so taking a dip during our holiday there became a preoccupation of mine, even though we were travelling in mid-April. Mid-April in England, I decided, was basically Canadian June. And my husband knows me well enough to entertain the possibility that my wild-swim might indeed happen, because to do otherwise would basically cement it in stone.

But even I wasn’t sure. I’m not a cold-water creature. I liked the idea of taking a swim, but knew I’d find it difficult to wade into icy water. I am not Jessica J. Lee, breaking ice with a hammer. Before I knew about her example, I had trouble jumping into lakes in July.

Fortunately, the stars aligned, or at least the weather did. “THE HOTTEST EASTER ON RECORD” blared the overblown UK headlines while we were there, even though it was only 21 degrees and Easter is rarely in mid-April anyway. But it was warm enough that me going for a swim wasn’t completely ridiculous.

And so last Sunday morning, we drove to Crook O’ Lune for a swim in the River Lune near Lancaster. (We were actually planning to stop in St. Michael’s to swim in the River Wyre, which was en-route to our Easter lunch, but then got caught up in Lancaster’s one way system, and the matter was out of our hands.) That everyone in the family was indulging my swimming whim meant that I had no choice but to go through with it, no matter how cold the water—they’d all scrambled down a steep ridge and climbed over a stone wall to get to the river bank in the first place, and were all slightly annoyed with me. If I stayed on the bank, they might have disowned me.

Crook O’ Lune was breathtakingly gorgeous, and the perils of fitting in a swim before Easter lunch is that there is no time to linger and take in the rolling green hills, sheep grazing just beyond. It wasn’t the wildest of wild swimming spots, there being a car park, toilets, and a snack bar, and plenty of people out walking, but there were signs advising against swimming at risk of death, so a subversive element was certainly in place.

I should have brought flip flops, but what can you do? I peeled off my socks and boots, jeans and blouse, revealing the bathing suit underneath. Climbing down the muddy banks and in I went, no sign of eels. Glorying in being one small person in the enormous landscape, hills and sky. Wading in to my waist, which wasn’t so difficult, but going further was hard, and once my chest was under water, it felt too close to whatever I suppose a heart attack might feel like for me to properly let go, but I tried to. Coming out and wading in again, because it’s always easier the second time. Floating, sculling, swimming in freshwater for the first time since Thanksgiving at Woodbine Beach partway around the world.

But then Easter lunch was calling, and it was cold. Overwhelmed with the fact that this thing I’d dreamed about doing had happened, which was kind of the theme of our entire week in England. My husband taking my photo, not that I was doing it for the ‘gram, but without the ‘gram, I might not have done it, it’s true, which I can say about many of the most excellent experiences I’ve had in my life. I climbed out of the water muddy and with hives (my arm had brushed something poison growing on the bank), which I’d say makes for a pretty authentic wild swimming experience all around.