Lynne Roper, wild swimming blogger and inspirational
advocate for outdoor swimming, has died at the young age of 55. Her
friend and fellow Devon swimmer Sophie Pierce pays tribute.
How to sum up Lynne? When I first met her I was
fascinated by her apparent contradictions. A former RAF
servicewoman and Margaret Thatcher supporter, she was now a raving leftie (and
she’d be very proud to be described as such). She’d gone to art
school, but was now a paramedic. She had a particular interest in and
love of witches; a witch dolly always hung from the rear view mirror in her
beloved camper van.
I met her of course, through swimming. She’d turned to
the water to help her recover from breast cancer, and a double
mastectomy. A few years ago, when the outdoor swimming network was
in its infancy, I met her through Facebook. We met with a few others in a
windy car park in Torquay one December day, and set off to swim through a
natural arch called London Bridge. Around the back of the arch we
discovered a cave and swam in, where we got bounced up and down by the swell,
narrowly avoiding banging our heads. We laughed hysterically and there
was an immediate bond.
The waters of Devon ran through Lynne’s blood. She grew up
swimming in both the Atlantic off the North coast and English Channel off the
South, and she was passionate about Dartmoor and the rivers Tavy and Dart in
particular. She lived in a former miner’s cottage on the Moor, which she
decorated in her flamboyant style in her favourite colours of pink and blue,
with a huge mermaid mosaic she’d made herself in the bathroom. (On her
Air BnB listing she proudly said: “I don’t do grey or beige”).
After her double mastectomy, Lynne found that swimming in
the rivers of Dartmoor and the seas of Devon gave her both physical and mental
therapy – as I think it does for the vast majority of us. What was so special
about her was her ability to translate that feeling into words and to
communicate the joy, humour, frequent silliness, camaraderie and all-round
life-enhancing qualities of swimming outdoors. She wrote a blog,
Wild Woman Swimming https://wildwomanswimming.wordpress.com/
which detailed her many adventures sometimes hilariously, sometimes angrily, always
thoughtfully and always articulately. She wrote beautifully, and with
originality. I remember one write-up after a particularly exciting low
tide swim, when we’d seen a range of marine wildlife including Devonshire cup
corals, breadcrumb sponge, and a very rare variety of soft coral called dead
men’s fingers which Lynne described as “the same shade of pink as Katie
Price’s jodhpurs’. It was a spot-on description too – they were indeed a
lurid shocking pink.
When she became ill with a brain tumour earlier this year,
she turned to writing about both her personal situation and the wider context
of the NHS, of which she was a passionate supporter. https://outofmybrains.org/ She
christened her tumour Hunt after the Health Secretary, and was furious about
what she saw as the ongoing cutbacks and the privatisation of the NHS by the
back door. She also wrote movingly about facing her own
death. Her blog is now being used to teach medical students.
Lynne’s death has shocked our swimming community both here
in Devon and wider afield. Locally we have lost a wonderful, witty
friend, who made us laugh, led us on many adventures and was always keen to
share her wonderful places. Lynne also touched people who never even met
her, through her writing and blogging, and through several films and
documentaries about wild swimming in which she appeared. One of the most
moving tributes has been from a blogger in America who’s never even met her,
but felt he knew her.
I have so many wonderful memories of swimming with
Lynne. Sitting in a hot tub at Slapton Sands, after getting battered by
huge rollers crashing onto the shingle shore. Several New
Year’s dips followed by raucous warm-ups in the pub. Hikes over Dartmoor
followed by plunges in cool rivers and playing in waterfalls. And one
incredible dawn swim where we watched the sky gradually turn pink and then
slipped into the shining sea.
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