Last weekend, I had my first wild swim adventure and it was… well, mixed emotions. I’m opting for “wild swimming” rather than “open water swimming” or “cold water swimming”, by the way, mostly because the Rebel badge on the subject is called Wild Swimmer. It’s a badge I dithered over doing – it’s from the Wild theme which makes me want to do it but on the other hand, I hate cold water and I’d kind of accepted that it’s a Wild badge I wouldn’t be doing.
But there I was.
There’s a swim club called the Bluetits which has lots of small clubs operating from closed Facebook groups. They’re all over the world but they originated in the UK and so there are more of them here than anywhere else. I joined my local one a long time ago but it’s taken a long time to be brave enough to actually go and swim with them. They have regular swims on Fridays at 5pm (except that’s a new time and most of the club haven’t got used to it yet/aren’t available) and Sundays at 9.30am. Well, I was in the area on Friday, with my kayaking stuff and it was a nice day so I was all out of excuses.
I sat on the beach and waited until a woman in a dry robe appeared. Just the one. I approached diffidently and said “You look like a Bluetit…” and fortunately, I was correct. Local Head Bluetit, at that. We changed – I was going in wearing my kayaking wetsuit, which is a long-john style. Rubber dungarees, really. I’d seen on the group that this particular club is welcoming to people who wear wetsuits and people who don’t and people who wear other things but it was reassuring that Head Bluetit also wears a wetsuit. Some wild swimmers look down on you for wearing neoprene and that’s quite offputting for a beginner who’s scared of cold water but is willing to brave it with the right outfit. For Head Bluetit to be a wetsuit-wearer was a great thing.
The tide was in. We strolled out. That’s ok. I’m ok with cold feet. Cold legs. Keep going. And before I knew it, I was up to my waist and that in itself made me chuckle manically and triumphantly. I’m standing so deep in the sea that I’m half-submerged! Head Bluetit also waded out and she was all reassuring and encouraging and then she said “Shall we dip?”
I wasn’t ready to “dip” but you kind of feel like you don’t have a choice. “Breathe out as you go in” said Head Bluetit and I tried. I really tried. But I know that I’m a person who will gasp and pant and panic as the cold water hits me. It’s what tends to kill people who fall in water – it’s not that the cold stops their body functions or that they can’t swim or not hold on long enough, it’s that they gasp as the water hits and they inhale it and drown. That would be me. I could survive falling into warm water, probably even quite rough warm water but if it’s cold, my cold shock response would drown me. I’m hoping it’ll get better with practice.
So I was dipped. And then Head Bluetit said “Shall we swim now?” and again, you can’t say no. So I swam.
I didn’t swim much. A few paddles, rather than actual swimming strokes, just enough to discover that my neoprene booties are not ideal swimming footwear but my feet were off the bottom and kicking and I was still gasping but I was kind of swimming. Left to my own devices, I’d never have got so brave so quickly.
I didn’t plan to go back Sunday. I was camping and I never imagined I could be up, with my tent and kit packed away ready to be at the beach by 9.30 in the morning, especially when I discovered that my swimming stuff was still soaked from Friday. It hadn’t dried in the open Ikea bag in the car that had been turned into an oven by sitting in the sun all Saturday and it had soaked anything else it touched. Lovely.
And yet there I was, getting in my car at 9.06, looking at my watch going “Huh, I could be there in time”.
I was there in time! Getting my wet stuff on was unpleasant but at least if you go in cold and wet, the cold wet water is less of a shock. I’d be far happier putting the base layer swimsuit on before I get to the beach in future, though, because it’s really awkward to change like that in public.
The local Bluetits are accustomed to the Sunday morning swims. There were four of them, of which three were wearing wetsuits and one was a full-length wetsuit with gloves. Yes, this was a place where I wasn’t going to felt shunned for not going out in bare skin and swimsuit.
The tide was out and we had to paddle a long way out before we found anything deep enough to even try to swim in and by that depth, we were encountering the long and wild seaweed beds. The Head Bluetit on Friday had been training for a big event and needed to get some miles under her… well, I was going to say feet. But these four were the sociable dipper type, who were more about just getting wet and having fun and not swimming long distances so we stuck together, more or less. I swam a little, maybe even a little more than I had on Friday. It took a while, without the calm assurance of “shall we swim now?” because I really disliked the cold water on my arms and we were well on our way back before I began to feel comfortable with them in the water. I’ll be investing in a pair of neoprene gloves before I go out next; or finding the slightly-torn ones from my caving/snowboarding days. I thought they were in my car but they don’t seem to be. They’re not in my caving cube either. But I swam, or doggy-paddled a little and although I didn’t like the cold water on my arms, I was already no longer afraid of the sea in the way I had been less than 48 hours ago.
By the time we were dragging ourselves through knee-deep water like a pack of beached whales, I realised I’d enjoyed my second swim. My first one had got me swimming, sort of. My second one had got me enjoying it. Was it the community thing, the fact that there were five of us? Was it the warm sun? Was it the fact that I’d already broken the ice, as it were, with my feelings towards the sea? For something I hadn’t been planning to do two hours ago, I was so glad I’d gone.
I joined them at the cafe on the next beach along for the usual post-swim bacon and tea (or apple juice and toast) and that’s when things fell apart. One of them in particular held some opinions that I just can’t get on board with, to the point that I don’t even want to be acquaintances with her. There are things you can tolerate in acquaintances that you can’t tolerate in friends and there are things you just plain can’t tolerate in anyone. In this case, I might have tolerated the ideas if it wasn’t for the tone of voice they were expressed in but the two together… no. I want to never see you again in my life and that means I probably won’t be going out with this particular flock again. Maybe on Fridays when I’m pretty sure she won’t be there. Maybe.
So now I have to decide what to do about my wild swimming. This is a good bit of beach, where I’m familiar with the sea and the conditions. This is somewhere I want to continue swimming so clearly I’m going to have to do it alone. This beach is also incredibly popular with tourists and if they can swim unsupervised – and they do, and with inflatables because some people don’t learn – then so can I. I understand the dangers of the sea and my danger radar goes off very early. You read the local paper for just a couple of weeks and you realise that some people who’ve lived inland all their lives have no danger radar at all. So I trust myself to swim here alone.
But I’d like to swim with other people sometimes, especially in places I don’t know well, so I’ve joined another Bluetit group, far enough down the coast that this particular caeruleus probably won’t go there. Trouble is, they’ve got a massive revolting algae bloom at their regular swim spot which smells bad and seems to provoke violent allergic reactions, so it’s not appealing going there right now. We’ll see how it goes.
My aim is twelve swims by the end of August. Well, ideally by the 22nd of August, to squeeze them all into three months. Two down, ten to go. And maybe I can actually swim a half-decent distance by the end, by which I mean “more than three strokes in a row while panting ‘cold! cold! cold!'”. I have no intention of being able to swim a mile or even a kilometre in open water but perhaps I could have my feet off the bottom more often than on.
One more thing: as we were walking back up the hill from the beach, one of them said “I wish they did a sort of… fleece with, like, a towel lining. With a zip. Like our white fleeces” and they all made sad noises that this thing didn’t exist. Except me. I made “Hmmm…” noises as I immediately began planning how I could bring such a thing into existence because that’s what I do. I’ve been to Tesco and bought a large men’s zip-up fleece and the biggest bath towel I could find. Putting the two together isn’t going to be pretty but watch this space for a post in a month or so about how I hacked together a kind of after-swim jacket and became the envy of the local Bluetits.