Why I swim in Wintry seas

The temperature gauge on the car pings as the wintered engine splutter-chokes awake.

-3 degrees. Outside air temperature. 

I’m dressed in more layers than a puff pastry pie and my insides still feel frozen.

By the time I arrive at the coast, I’ve warmed up a little - or at least, the air around me has warmed up. The benefits of modern car heating systems means that my excessive layers trick, combined with the heater at full whack, has worked its petrol-fuelled power, fast. 

I park up, switch off the engine and look out and down to the sea, from my clifftop vantage. The tide is in - this is good. It’s taken me much longer than it should have, to appreciate the merits of noting the tide timetable. 

The air outside the warm car looks grey and uninvitingly cold, the water even less inviting. This isn’t so good.

I tuck my layers into my trousers - an attempt at hermetically sealing myself in against all threat of draughts. The combo of this tucked in look plus my ‘innocently’ acquired council worker jacket is that I now resemble a neon Michelin man. But this is the least of my worries. Besides, resembling some sort of generic municipal official, has its benefits in life so I’ve found.

All of this tucking in and zipping up is also a delay tactic - I really don’t want to get out of the car. It always feels like a counter-intuitive move at this point, to relinquish the comfort and warmth for a voluntary shiver and chill.

The familiar mental tousle begins and I split into two bickering selves: on the one side is the positive, dynamic, can-do self who always has the idea to come swimming in the first place, and on the other side is my opposing self: the one who is short-tempered and bolshy at the whole bloody stupid idea. She curses and puts forward a range of always to-hand get-out options: ‘it’s very warm in here, I’m very tired, maybe it really isn’t a good idea to do this when I’m really tired, and aren’t I a bit peckish too? Probably also not a good idea to do this when hungry. Pretty sure there is also the hint and sniffle of a cold coming on too.’ And on it goes…

Still, against the beseeches of my inner twin, the dynamic self takes charge and switches onto auto-pilot. Keys out of the ignition, phone slipped into the pocket of the car door, towel reached for and scrunched under arm. With a dash of luck and foresight, there will be some clean, dry pants already stuffed into my coat pocket for afterwards. If not, no matter - I’ll just go commando later.

With a curious internal logic that even I can’t fully rationalise, I don’t bother with actual swimwear or even a wetsuit in winter. The path of least faff and thus the diminished threat of getting more cold is simply to go into the sea in whatever underwear or vest that I already happen to be wearing. It’s also a mental trick for getting me out the house in the first place - a sort of sartorial sleight of hand.

On the trudge down to the beach, the twins are still bickering. But the resolve of the dynamic twin is steely and steadfast now and she simply ups the pace and beelines me down to my favourite spot - the jetty. Towel and keys are pooled onto the upper ledge and then there’s a brief pause to scan the horizon. 

In this split-second, the bolshy twin wastes no time and leaps forth - she knows this is her last moment, her best chance: ‘It’s bloody freezing, I’m frozen through again - just from the wind walking down…’ plaintive whines reeling on a loop now…

But steely twin is determined by now and switches to auto-pilot again. Fixing her eyes back on the horizon, she strips me down to pants and vest - taking off several layers at once and leaving my woollen socks in a suspended puddle at the bottom of my wellies. 

Bolshy twin sulks and slinks away - defeated. There are no more moments or windows of opportunity now - she has not won the battle this time and she is left with no choice but to unite, in solidarity with her opposing twin.

*

My walk to the water is straight-backed and strident - a physical posture aimed, I suspect now that I’m reflecting on it, at bolstering and bootstrapping the mind. When I reach the filigree lace of the waves, my toes are in first. I’m always pleasantly surprised by the temperature at this stage, but by the time I’m up to my shins - there is no doubt that the water is really very cold. Bitingly cold. Painfully cold.

I go into a very particular mode now - I don’t scream or shriek as I’ve often heard a gaggle of fellow swimmers do at this point in proceedings, and at this time of year. In fact, I’ve always found the screaming and shrieking a little curious - like a precious waste of pivotal breath and energy. I’m suddenly in ruthless mode - shrieking out could threaten my supplies of oxygen and warmth coming in. 

I’m still wade-striding in to the waves. The trick, for me at least, is not to stop or slow the pace I’ve built up walking across the sand to the water - but to keep going. As though the water isn’t really there or is just a continuation. When the cold wet claws make a grab for my waist though - it’s testing. I slow my breath - by now the battle of the twins has transferred to the battle for my breath - wrestling to release itself as short palpitant rasps. But I quash and quash that by marshalling my breath to slow down, usually with some inner mental cursing thrown in for good measure.

And then - just like that - I’m in. I still have to focus hard on my breath to keep it in check, but I’m in and I lengthen out resistant limbs, instinctively recoiling and curling inwards as they are, against the cold.

*

Swimming is in my blood. Or feels as though it is - water coursing my veins just as vitally, as the cells inked red. My mum, now 70, swims every single day of the year - come rain, shine, sleet or ice. No wetsuit - just a swimming costume.

Back in the 80s, long before ‘wild swimming’ or ‘chill swimming’ became Instagram hashtags or sofa topics on morning telly, or subjects of scientific research into ways to ward off dementia - we just swam. Plain and simple. 

Growing up as kids on a rambling smallholding on an old sprawling forestry estate, swimming in the river down the lane was part of the lexicon of our upbringing. The gentle, gurgling stream a stone’s throw from our back door, wound its way down the hill to the wider, more grown-up, River Ystwyth. 

Our most frequented spot was to trickle down to the ‘The Dam’ (as it was colloquially known to us) for its craggy clamber, plunging pool and great gushing waterfall - at the bottom of our lane. Or further, a crows’-fly stroll across fields to the ‘Concrete Bridge’ (so-called for the concrete monstrosity of a bridge, somehow given the go-ahead by the Forestry Commission to bridge the Ystwyth and join the dusty tracks around the estate). 

The Concrete Bridge however, did offer another prime swimming spot -  for its wider expanse of water and sinuous curve along the frill of trees as it meandered its way down the valley. This was a good place for launching makeshift rafts or dinghies made out of old tractor inner tubes. A wider, deeper spot than ‘The Dam’ and all the better to accommodate the great octopus of the splashing and leaping limbs, of squealing kids.

Other days, if Mrs Whitley was not resident in her holiday home, wedged into the bank of the river as it was, just down from our house: we trespassed by gentle stealth through her gates and across her garden. This took us down to another prime swimming spot, known somewhat unimaginatively to us as, ‘the Bungalows’ (there were two of them - on either side of the track). 

This was another prime location: a deep, ‘slow’ pool canopied in part by some large trees, extending their sturdy branches out across the water. These branches served as excellent diving boards and the pool on this bend of river, was deep enough for us to repeatedly launch ourselves in - on those long summer afternoons or satchel-slung-in-the-grass sessions after school. 

‘The Bungalows’ was also, as I found out in my early teens, an excellent spot to snorkel. I will never forget what felt like a magical discovery to me - that with the simple aid of a mask and breathing ‘tube’ or ‘funnel’, I could stay underwater for HOURS before feeling any hint of cold. Quite literally. And not only that, there was so much to see and explore under the water too - all of which was largely imperceptible above water. Rocks and crags, caves, crannies and crevices. Pretty stones, sunken bits of river-flotsam and jetsam - or whatever the river equivalent is. The odd fish too - shooting past like a star, never to be seen again. Always a startling sight, but a reassuring one too. Life alive and thriving, alongside me in the river.

Our swim spots changed shape and character over the seasons and years. The shingle at the bottom of The Dam, for example, would drastically shape-shift during a storm or a deluge of heavy rain. Huge ‘dunes’ of stone would drift under water and congregate in new mounds, meaning that all of the deep and shallow parts which we could navigate with our eyes closed - would suddenly change. It was always disorientating to go swimming after a storm as we’d have to tentatively feel our way into the water and map the new ‘terrain’. Discover afresh the deep pools and the shallower waters.

*

On sunny days, I would often go what I called ‘river trekking’. This was an activity that once embarked on, usually extended across several days - returning home only when hungry for meals or as the sun dropped down behind the trees.

Dressed in shorts and t-shirt or sometimes, even in a skirt or dress - basically whatever I happened to be wearing, I would find a little entry spot on the bank of the river and slip in and slowly, gingerly, wade up stream. Often pausing for a sit down in the little waterfalls along the way - for a little bubble and scrub and rub on my back, or for the gauntlet challenge of not being pushed back down stream or off my stone. This always made me squeal with exhilarated glee, as even the seemingly small waterfalls in a river, are powerful - and playful with that muscle.

Now that I look back on it, I see that river trekking was my childlike way of centring myself, a way to retrieve some peace and space. A meditative practice, of sorts - and an innocent stab at a measure of independence too. I would tell mum where I was going - and she would never raise an objection and so I slipped quietly off, by myself. It was an incredibly soothing, humming-under-my-breath sort of activity and I would invariably be gone for hours.

Perhaps some of my deep need to be in or near water, stems from that time. I’ve always been happiest near water. Soothed, calmed, instantly restored. Be that time spent sailing on boats, swimming in rivers and oceans or simply living near to them and knowing that they are there. Perhaps there is something of the universal/innate human need in there too. If you look on a map, the majority of human settlements are plotted along or close to sources of water.

In fact, I’ve always struggled with the idea of settling to live anywhere that isn’t close to water. I instantly feel suffocated and recoil at the thought - as though I really wouldn’t be able to breathe. Curious really, given how palpitant one’s breath can become, when trying to get into freezing cold water in winter!

*

Back to the present 2021 day and I’m still in the water just off New Quay beach. I don’t stay in long today, this isn’t a fitness drive - so just a few loops or meandering lengths before the balance between my inner and outer body temperature starts to tilt too far. 

As I walk up the beach back to my clothes, I notice another swimmer coming down the slope and onto the sand. Also a woman, perhaps the same age as me or a bit older. Clad in an all-over wetsuit that extends from the top of her head, down to her toes she is essentially 98% neoprene and 2% human. A neon buoyancy aid loosely attached by belt to her waist, a snazzy sports watch on her wrist (which presumably tells her all kinds of important things beyond the time) and various other bits and bobs of ‘kit’ - for before, during and post-swim. She is very well-prepared. 

In sum, she represents what I would call a ‘proper’ professional, chill-swimmer.  And for a brief moment, standing there with my sallow skin, my nipples poking through my tatty old vest - rendered long and baggy by the water - shivering and dripping wet, I feel a bit inadequate or pathetic set against this apparently amazonian dolphin-woman. But the feeling soon dissipates. I’m happy for our approaches to the same pursuit, to be different.

Swimming in water, to me, is not so far removed from my longstanding fantasy of being able to - one day - fly. The only difference being, that one happens in the air and the other, in water. An encumbrance of kit would, to my reasoning, simply weigh me down and clip my wings - even if simply at the psychological level.

*

So why DO I do this? Why do I actively choose to go into icy cold waters at this time of year (or anytime)? With hardly anything (sensible) on by way of clothes or kit? 

I’ve been variously called ‘mad’, ‘bonkers’, ‘masochistic’ and ‘hardcore’ over the years. The truth is, I don’t see myself as any of those things really - well, I am a little bonkers perhaps. But that’s a general character trait rather than one specific to my swimming habits!

Sea swimming isn’t about fitness or physical training for me. Or clocking up the miles or the laps or the time spent in the water or the distance swam. Though I fully respect anybody who, like the amazonian-dolphin woman perhaps, might do it for those reasons.

I go in the sea as often as I can year-round, as it’s the surest way I’ve found to get a near-instant, natural high. When I emerge from the water, my skin may well be an especially attractive shade of mottled neon-pink/purply-blue, but the endorphins feel like they are power-surging around my whole body. I feel zinging. Euphoric. Recalibrated in a way that I’ve yet to find a better way to - as though an instant reboot switch somewhere on my body has just been pressed. 

All of my earlier tousling, my brain fog, my tiredness, my leaden-limbed winter lethargy - falls away, vanishes. In short, I feel an all-over sensation of zinging vitality. So much so that I sometimes just run up and down the beach after being in the water, as if fuelled by a  turbo-boost of childlike energy, glee and invincibility. I’m suddenly 8yrs old again, without an adult care or concern in the world. 

And that, right there - is the addictive part. That’s the thing that draws me back again and again to the icy waters. My mind may dispute all of that ad nauseam when it comes to getting into the water, but my body remembers it all with a no nonsense, case-closed, no further discussion finality. Like a fish returning to source - it becomes almost instinctive.

These are all well-documented reasons, I’m sure, for braving the icy water in winter. Familiar to fellow swimmers - shared too perhaps. 

I can’t say I like cold water - it isn’t pleasant. But paradoxically, it is wonderfully bracing and enlivening. A potent and powerful element that restores me, puts my mind and body back in synch with each other, like nothing else I’ve found. 

But there is another reason I do it too. A reason that has become especially pronounced during this last year of lockdown. I feel a little coy to say it out loud, as though I am admitting to leprosy or similar, but touch - being and feeling touched by another human being - is, I’d venture, a vital and universal human need. Without it we sort of wither, or curl inwards like a brown, wintered leaf. I’m a single woman, a single parent too - and as such, touch - adult touch, is in scant supply. Sometimes I forget that some of my limbs  - and my corporal nooks and crannies - even exist at all.

Swimming in the sea envelopes me in touch.  Gently punishing the tips of my toes and pearling along the lobes of my ears, even dripping inelegantly off the end of my nose! 

Water is the feline element - pouring, curling and folding its silken body into the tightest of spots and the smallest of spaces. No part of me is dry when I emerge from the waves. And thus, an all-over reminder that I’m not a robot trapped in the cyclical daily routine of unchanging, auto-pilot activities/chores. No, in fact, I’m alive, fully alive with blood-pumping, air-circulating, skin pink and piqued. Spice to excite the dry rice of a day that in these long months of this last year, feels like it’s been conveyor belted along on the end of yesterday - without flux. We all need a tingle to grace our skin, hairs to stand on end. Sea swimming does that for me - adds a ribbon of sensuality to the prosaic parcel of my daily actuality. 

But there is an innocence to it all too. World’s away from sensuality or any perceived hardcore machismo, and instead, simply the shortest pathway back (that I’ve found) to a fully embodied reclamation of the unbridled joy of childhood. 

Pure, spirited and unencumbered.