Swimming at Port Eliot

I used to think that swimming in cold water when the sun was not shining was something only done by people in the full throes of lunacy. The perception that swimming in Ireland and England is best confined to indoor stretches of chlorine is widespread thankfully I’ve taken the plunge and dipped my toe into wilder waters.

I was switched on to what is known as wild swimming a couple of years ago when I had the good fortune to go away for a Photography Weekend with Martin Parr and the School of Life. His wife Susie Parr is a dedicated outdoor swimmer and is writing a book on the social and cultural history of Outdoor Swimming. Spurred on by her enthusiasm I went swimming in the Isle of Wight and instead of it being ghastly I found the whole thing totally exhilarating. I felt invigorated and yes I’m aware it sounds new agey but very much back in touch with nature.

This year I rediscovered Outdoor swimming at the Port Eliot Literary Festival, The Outdoor Swimming Society did a series of wild swims with the founder of OSS the hugely inspired Kate Rew. It was a magical swim and I berated myself for not doing wild swimming more often. It’s so reassuring to me that organizations like this exist. In our age of branding and mass consumerism it’s a joy that a group get together to extoll the virtues on swimming as the realm of freedom, adventure and magic.

Nobody says it better than Robert Macfarlane of the OSS – ‘The Outdoor Swimming Society is there to give people a passport to a different world, or worlds. Once you see open water as something to be entered, rather than driven around, flown over or stopped at the brink of, then even familiar landscapes become rife with adventure. Britain seems newly permeable, excitingly deepened. Every lake or loch or lough or llyn is a bathing pool, every river a journey, every tide or wave a free ride. As a wild swimmer, you become an explorer of the undiscovered country of the nearby, passing through great geological portals…There’s nothing faintly class-based about all of this. What could be more democratic than swimming? What more equalising than near-nakedness? You need even less equipment to swim than you do to play football. A bathing costume, if you insist. Then just enough common sense to avoid drowning, and just enough lunacy to dive in”

Riley and I swimming in Camber Sands last week. More invigorating than a ten hour sleep or a two hour massage. Honestly.

How could I not go in?