While some people are cowering from the winter weather, our county’s love-affair with plunging into rivers and lakes continues to gather pace, but what is it that entices people to enter the chilling flow and why do we love it so? Esther Lafferty attempts to explain her love affair with wild swimming.
Wild swimming – or the practice of swimming in natural waters (although the Oxfordshire landscape is hardly an untamed wilderness) – has been experiencing a renaissance of late. It’s an activity that is surely as old as the hills and yet it’s also where the twenty-first world collides with the timeless and the ethereal. Rivers are wonderful living pathways that appear boldly in town centres and then peacefully wend their enchanted way through undiscovered countryside before popping up in an entirely different muddy hamlet or traffic bottleneck.
Although there are neoprene-clad triathletes that slog round lakes at speed, and sleek long-distance swimmers who can whip back and forth across Windermere in an afternoon, for the most past, getting into the water is a very levelling experience. Whatever your age, body shape, walk of life or reason for showing up, each swimmer is equal as they approach the water’s edge. Each leaves behind the labels that defines them day-in, day-out: Lizzie the freelancer, Charlie’s mum and Bev-who’s-beating-breast-cancer line up together shedding descriptors like the skins of mythical Selkies, exposing their inner beings to the elements. Whatever worries each may carry on their shoulders slide into the river as we do, and dissipate downstream.
Once immersed, there’s a jubilation, ‘I did it; I’m tougher than I think’, and a fizz on the skin like a party of fizzy bubbles, a sensation of electricity and an aliveness, a winning combination of vitality and vivacity. This is a considered mindfulness moment for those with a Zen approach to life; and unplanned mindfulness for the rest of us who can’t help but think only about the here, the now, and the ‘Oh, it’s bloomin’ bracing!’, before an almost eerie calm kicks in.
Wild swimming feels like a celebration of one’s free-spirit paired with a liberal dashing of low-level rebellion that amuses me: I wear a ridiculous hat; my parents still do not approve although I’ve been dunking for a decade; my husband thinks I’m crazed; and random people on the river bank stand stock still in horror at the prospect. We try to kid ourselves it’s in awe but if I’m honest, I’m not so sure.
Rivers have different characters – whereas mountain rivers are hard rock, icy and edged with spiked evergreen, we’re lucky to have Old Father Thames in our midst. The Thames is lush and almost Amazonian in the places where willows dapple sweeping curves. In comparison to swimming in the sea where the world feels vast and rolling waves threaten to submerge you, swimming between its banks is an intimate experience, although sometimes it’s fierce (sometimes too fierce to venture into), and sometimes, gentle.
If you are interested in swimming in the Oxfordshire great outdoors, then the best place to start is on Facebook! Search for Oxfordshire Bluetits, an informal welcoming group of people who like to dip, dunk or swim, with or without wetsuits. There are no fees, rules, requirements or regulations and there are swimming opportunities almost daily in the Thames, local lakes and more.
We recommend you take the time to read up on staying safe in bodies of open water before you venture in.