Simon and the swan
...or how I started wild swimming.
I am getting changed between two car doors to protect my modesty – advice from a man, clearly. It’s raining and I’m trying not to get wet. ‘You’re about to get into a lake,’ Simon laughs as he emerges from the other side of the car in a pair of Speedos he promised not to wear. ‘What? They’re Speedo shorts, not Speedo-Speedos,’ he proclaims innocence. Either way, I avert my eyes and wiggle my swimsuit under my towel and up over my shivering body.
We are here at Shepperton Lake because it’s Thursday morning and Thursday mornings have been, for the past 12 weeks, the time when I sit in a cramped first floor room and talk to an NHS-appointed stranger about my feelings. Every week, the same box of tissues sitting presumptuously on the coffee table between us. Every week, me staring them down and refusing to need them; refusing to need anybody or anything. ‘Try to do something on Thursday mornings,’ my counsellor had encouraged kindly after concluding our time together with a meditation involving a mountain.
And so here we are. On hearing I had been diagnosed with ‘moderate to severe’ anxiety, my childhood friend Simon had offered to take me wild swimming, promising the cold water would do me good. I wasn’t convinced, but with a distinct lack of other options once my 12 weeks was up, I had conceded. We had started in Guildford Lido and now, according to Simon, it was time to graduate to a lake and wild swimming proper. I remain unconvinced.
I tentatively tiptoe into the ‘shallow end’ surprised by how velvety the mud feels beneath my feet – and then between my toes. Simon strides in with all the confidence of someone who does ultra marathon trail running for fun. ‘It’s lovely once you’re in’ he says, treading water as he waits patiently for me. I am by now in up to my ankles, hands raised either side of me as if they can somehow get out of this. I inch in slowly and, after a painstakingly long time and not a small amount of squealing, I am finally swimming alongside him – in a lake!
Simon is working hard to slow his pace to mine and when I get my breath back, we get to chatting. ‘Hey look,’ he whispers urgently, interrupting his own sentence. He points slowly, being careful not to splash, to a large white swam swimming past us, with six fluffy grey cygnets on her back – her wings arched in a protective curve around them. We stop swimming and stay as still as we can, treading just enough water to stay afloat.
She glides past us, proud, protective, majestic.
We hold our breath.
It feels like such a privilege to be so close, but also to be at this angle – we are eye to eye with those little cygnets, their Mum looking down on us.
She glides away and we exhale simultaneously. ‘Wow!’
Of all the advice my counsellor gave me, I think this was the best. ‘Do something on Thursday mornings.’ I’ve been wild swimming ever since.
The tide line
Wild swimming was just called swimming when I was a kid – we swam off my stepdad’s fishing boat (well, actually, I was only brave to do that once!) and we swam at the beach all summer, but somewhere along the way I stopped. Swimming lessons spent shivering poolside rather than in the water, insecurities about my changing (teenage and perimenopausal!) body and an irrational desire to stay warm and dry all put paid to something I once loved. Thanks to my friend Simon it’s now something I do regularly and I cannot tell you how much good it has done for my mental health.
I am a craft, nature and sustainability writer and a certified Blue Health Coach™. To learn more and try a Blue Health Coaching™ tool for yourself, visit makingdesigncircular.org/coaching.