The other weekend I went for my first ever Moonlight Swim at Shepton Mallet lido. It’s an event they put on during the summer at the full moon and it features a two-hour outdoor swim by moonlight, firelight and fairy lights and a free hot chocolate to warm up afterwards.
It’s a heated pool, heated by the waste heat from the brewery on the other side of the wall. You either accept that it’s an incredibly ugly backdrop or you accept that it’s eccentric and useful. The trouble is that when I went in May, it was too early in the season (and May was too cold, wet, windy and revolting) for the water to have warmed up properly and when I went in August, the heating had broken down the week before and it still hadn’t quite recovered. In short, I find it’s a bit on the cold side. My own pool, on the days when it’s chillier, you warm up after two lengths. At this one, I’m still not properly warm after ten lengths. It’s not freezing and it’s never claimed to be full-on toasty, like its Icelandic counterpart would be, but it’s on the colder side for an outdoor heated pool.
There are two sessions, 8-10pm and 10pm-midnight. Because Shepton is a bit of a distance, I thought it would be better to do the earlier one, even though it wouldn’t get dark until halfway through. Evening swims aren’t such a novelty for me; my usual lane swims have been 8-9pm this season, although numbers have dwindled so much that they’re not running them anymore as of this week. But my pool merely switches on its sodium striplights when it gets dark.
Shepton Mallet’s moonlight swims are lit by fairylights wound around the railings and a firepit. I admit, most of the heavy lifting of the illumination is by the very bright floodlights which isn’t quite as atmospheric but the management’s ultimate priority is making sure no one dies and that means the lifeguards need to be able to see every corner. It does make the pool glow very blue in photos so I’ll forgive it for being bright and harsh. And it wasn’t lit by the moon either. Oh, there was an excellent full moon but it never made it high enough in the sky to see from the water, not during the earlier session anyway.
I tried counting the swimmers but obviously they weren’t staying still, and some arrived late and some left early so the best I can say is that there were maybe 30-40 people booked in altogether. It doesn’t sound many but it’s not a very big pool and it was the biggest and densest crowd I’ve been in since March 2020 and the most I’ve seen in my own pool this season is 11, which felt far too overcrowded in three lanes when eight or nine of them were definitely slow swimmers. See, they spilled into the medium lane and then they spilled into the fast lane! For its 30+ swimmers, Shepton Mallet had two narrow lanes roped off for lengths and the rest was a free-for-all. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to a pool that wasn’t operating a lane swim. I’ve become unaccustomed to people who aren’t there to swim.
Another time, that might have annoyed me. I swim for fun but I also swim for exercise and to that end, I like to get in a good number of lengths. But I knew what this event would be like and I’d already done my two exercise swims for the week. Anything I achieved today was a bonus and if herds of non-swimmers prevented me from doing enough lengths, it literally didn’t matter.
As it happened, and unsurprisingly, virtually no one stayed the full two hours. By nine o’clock it was quietening down. I’d done a reasonable number of lengths zigzagging among the forest of people and then when the slower of the two lanes began to empty out, I slid into there. Less than ten lengths later, I found I had it entirely to myself and since there was no one getting in my way, “I’ll just do a mile” turned into “I’ll just do the equivalent of 80 lengths” and then “Well, I’ve got the time to do the equivalent of 90 lengths”.
The trouble is, the 90 lengths in question are of a 25 yard pool and Shepton Mallet lido is 25 metres. I hadn’t thought about it in advance so I hadn’t calculated it beforehand while I had a calculator nearby. My mental arithmetic totally failed me in the pool. How many yards is 90 x 25? If a yard is 22.86m, can I convert that? Ok, 23 x 90 and then take off what’s left. Nope. I dropped maths in 2001. Eventually all I could do was decide 80 was getting close and I’d keep going until 9.30pm and that surely would cover it and give me enough time to have my hot chocolate.
(The answer is that 83 lengths would have covered it, by the way)
I’m used to changing on the side of the pool, beach-style. I have a very stretchy beach dress that I use as the cover-up in the process. But it’s one thing changing on the side when there’s only you, two lifeguards and maybe one other person still swimming. It’s another when the lockers are between the door and the changing room and there are fortyish people milling around. I had to go into the changing rooms, into a fairly enclosed place with other people which is something I’m personally still trying to minimise. I put my mask on and changed as quickly as I could. Funny how unpleasant it feels putting clothes on when you’re still a bit damp inside compared to putting clothes on when you’re still a bit damp outside and funny how much more restrictive a mask feels when your face is damp and you’re in a hurry. Then I fled to the nice safe fresh air, exchanged my token for a cup of hot chocolate and went and found a vacant bench.
Obviously taking photos is almost as important as the swimming at an event like this so I did that. And immediately realised that I should have taken my camera as well as my phone. Those floodlights made the pool glow and that was nice. I sat at the end of the pool at my empty bench and watched the Serious Swimmers in rubber caps plough up and down, shouting inexplicably about potatoes to each other. Then the people sitting at the benches around the fire left and I sprang up and stole the bench, which was the absolute perfect time for the manager, or at least lifeguard-in-charge, to come and put some more logs on the fire and poke it back into life. It had been dying down but now I had fresh flames. Photo time!
The hot chocolate was disappointing but then I’m accustomed to that. Hot chocolate made with powder and boiling water always tastes kind of greasy. It needs to be made with milk and with twice as much chocolate as the packet thinks. If I come and do this again next year, I’ll make a flask and bring it with me. I didn’t hear any complaints about the tea or coffee that everyone else had opted for but then I guess people drink enough of those for them to be more or less perfected by now, or at least for people to be so used to them that they don’t notice when they’re barely drinkable.
Between the fire, the hasty dressing, the hot water and the fact that it was mid-August, I was quite warm and very happy to sit and enjoy the sights until the session ended and I was thrown out. In fact, I don’t think that would have happened. The 10pm-midnight swimmers were already making their way in and it would be impossible to tell who belonged to which session if not for the fact that some of us had damp hair. Most likely I could have sat by the fire and watched the chaos in the pool for another two hours. But it was already ten o’clock and I had a fairly long drive home and work in the morning. I finished my hot chocolate, took a couple of selfies against the bright pool and headed for the car.
I’d like to point out that although the moon hadn’t shown its face to the pool, it accompanied me all the way home. It was low and huge and golden as I was leaving Shepton Mallet and by the time I got home, it was high enough in the sky that it probably would have been visible to at least part of the second session. Well done to the sky for being absolutely clear and allowing me to see the full moon at all, even if not from the water.