Swimming through lockdown

Lockdown coincided with the start of miraculous spring weather. Getting outside has never been more important, and yet this joyous (and often noisy) sprouting of new life that I experience daily is a jarring contrast to the feeling of fear in a suddenly altered human world.   The birds are singing more loudly than I've ever heard them, the flowers in the hedgerows are so bright and fresh, and yet a virus is on the rampage, killing people daily. As usual, I find solace in the water. Instead of driving, I am walking to my special places on the River Dart, uncomfortably realising what a lazy and polluting thing I am in normal times - driving to places that only actually take 40 minutes to walk to.   I went to visit Felix and found the daffodils on his grave had flowered, along with snakes head fritillaries and cowslips. 

The water, my companion

It's such an age since I've updated this blog. Felix's death has been so utterly life-shattering that writing about swimming just doesn't seem that important any more.  But actually I think it is important to say that it is a tremendous solace and has helped keep me going in the two years since he died. Whether it's in river, lake, or sea, taking the plunge soothes my mind, distracts me and, quite simply, makes me feel better.

Euphoria at Burgh Island

Setting off 

I haven't managed to swim around Burgh Island for a couple of years. I usually swim around it in September as a birthday celebration, but last year we were defeated by a large swell.  This year's attempt was successful - if somewhat terrifying (but in a good way).  We set off on a beautiful afternoon at about 5:30, the sun blinding us as we headed to the west of the island.  It was high water, so we waded across before starting to swim.  Massive waves slapped our faces while lifting us up and chucking us down, and foaming endlessly around the rocks.  We felt we  weren't getting anywhere.  Ordinarily we would probably have given up at this point but we had our trusty kayakers Lucian and Rob with us so we pushed on and eventually got to the back of the island where suddenly it was easier.  We were still going up and down like yoyos, but the wind was behind us and suddenly we were funnelling through the gulley at the back (universally known as Death Valley),

Around the back

Approaching Death Valley

and into a whirlpool on the other side, watched by a chorus line of cormorants silhouetted against the setting sun.  We made quite good progress around and past the Mermaid's Pool and then it was a final slog across the causeway.  We staggered out (me and Catherine were last) to whoops and cheers from everyone, all on a complete high at completing the swim round the island. We just couldn't stop grinning, and I felt such love for this group who I've been swimming with for around a decade now.  I was also thinking a lot about my son Felix who died last year, who had been present so often at this September tradition over the years.   Of course his absence is an enormous gap, but at the same time these traditions are important for continuity and in a way help me to remember him through the pain of him not being there.

Felix and Lucian on the sea tractor in 2012 

On a high

My tribute to Lynne Roper

My dear friend Lynne Roper died in 2016.  I wrote a piece about her for H2Open Magazine but have just discovered you have to pay to read it online.  So here it is for free:

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.     

Mad march

It's the 18th of March and it's snowing.  Our second whiteout in a couple of weeks.  Crazy weather and this month has generally felt a bit crazy.  It was the first anniversary of Felix's death on the 8th/9th, and I was transported back to that horrendous week when I discovered he had died.  I had gone to see him in a show in Leicester where he was at university, and he never showed up at our meeting place.  I raised the alarm, and went to his halls where I arrived to find an ambulance outside.   He was dead in his room.. A year has passed and in many ways I am still in shock and there are many days when I still cannot comprehend it, I still not quite believe this has happened. 

When I swim - and this is particularly true of swimming in the sea - I feel closer to him.   In the water my body is weightless and I feel detached from the world, like a spirit, an essence, which I suppose is what he is now. I need that feeling of separation, of absence from my new life without him, and to return to a kind of state where I am with him.

This week I have slept very badly and felt a particular urge to swim.  Ju and I went down to Hopes Nose. It was low tide and we swam off a little beach packed with grey pebbles streaked with pink and white quartz   The water clasped us in its coldness and I shut my eyes and felt the water, and felt my son.

Getting through Christmas

It's the end of Boxing Day and we did it.  We made it through Christmas without Felix.  I think I got through because a sort of numbness and disbelief set in again, like when he first died.  I had a sense of disconnection from the whole thing.  Perhaps it's because Christmas is all about age-old rituals and these rituals are strong and definite and bring into relief whatever is happening at the time. Here we were again doing things we always do at this time of year, getting a tree, going to Mass, eating turkey, singing carols, it just didn't seem possible that Felix  wasn't there.  Christmas highlighted and accentuated his absence, and I went into numb mode again. 
On Christmas Day we went to see him at his burial place which my brother James calls 'the green hill far away'.  Alex, Lucian and I stood there in the roaring gale and opened our present to him, and left him some mince pies under his tree.  Earlier I had had a morning dip with Yaara at Ladies' Pool, which was pointy-daggers cold, our limbs pricked by the icy water.  Today I swam in the West Dart, in a swollen, fast moving pool.  As my body entered the water I felt myself shrinking back to a sort of visceral essence of being, rewinding back to Felix when he was part of my body, part of me, grown from me. Momentarily I felt connected back to him, then there was nothing.

Puppies and swimsuits

Above Butcher's Cove

We've recently got a puppy, who is of course, totes adorbs.   She's a black woolly bundle of joy called Tarka. This week she was allowed to be taken out properly for the first time, so I decided to introduce her to the joys of the Devon coast.   It all fitted in rather well, because the lovely people at UK Swimwear (link here) had asked me to review a swimming costume for them, so it was the perfect chance to get out and head to the sea.  We headed for Mothecombe and followed the coast path west, with Tarka sniffing at pretty much every blade of grass, and also annoying Buddy,  Yaara's endlessly patient black labrador.  We climbed down to Butcher's Cove where we immediately found about 10 Portugese men of war jellyfish stranded on the beach which we we buried because we were worried about the dogs picking them up.   I then got into my costume (link here), which was beautifully made, with fabulous ruching, and lined with lovely soft material. As someone with a full figure, I'm always looking for a costume that both supports and flatters, and this did both.  It was very comfortable to swim in. Yaara also tried it out, and she is at least two sizes smaller than me, but it looked great on her too!  At a touch under £90 it is not cheap, but in my experience, with swimsuits, you get what you pay for, and if you pay more you get better quality, which was the case here.  It felt like a very well made suit.  We swam out towards the mouth of the cove and then back and around the rocks, keeping an eye out for the dreaded PMOWs but there weren't any.  Buddy joined us in the water but Tarka was far too tired and flopped out on the beach in order to regain energy for more pestering of her fellow canine on the return walk.

Trying out the costume 

Setting off 

It looks fab on Yaara too

a gratuitous pic of Tarka 

Yikes!

Approaching the cove

"Are those what I think they are?"

Rachel and I set off  from Little Dartmouth, following the coast path around towards Sugary Cove.   As we approached the headland we followed a track towards the edge that we hadn't gone down before.   We spotted a path winding down to an intriguing-looking little cove, and could see steps at the bottom. The water below was enticingly blue and we scrambled down the path and made camp on some big rocks.  The cove was perfect  (it is called Western Combe Cove).  About 50 yards offshore was a double island, with a cave in the middle, and to the right and left, whole processions of gullies and shark fin rocks.  I felt really excited about exploring this new territory, and we swam enthusiastically off towards the island.  Suddenly, Rachel stopped in her tracks. "Those aren't Portugese Men of War are they?"  She pointed towards some bubbles on the surface between us and the island.  My immediate reaction was "of course they're not" but on closer inspection, yes, indeed that's what they were.    Reluctantly we got out, and continued on our walk.  The sun came out, and it was very warm, and it felt like summer with the sunshine glinting on the rocks and on our faces. We stopped at a rock platform near Blackstone Point and had another, more successful swim, with the sun low in the sky.  It was only afterwards when we were getting changed that Rachel revealed she'd spotted the most enormous seal approaching me in the water.   When we were both safely on shore it popped up again,  raising its neck high out of the water.   

Remarkably well camouflaged PMOWs -just like bubbles

The only thing we need to worry about now is seals

Finding new territory

Since Felix died I find it helps to find new places to go.  All the old places are full of memories of him, and it's good to visit them, but not all the time.  About two weeks after he died Alex and I went for a walk along the coast path west of Heybrook Bay, a stretch we hadn't walked before, and found a stunning lagoon.  It was the period in between Felix's death and his funeral,  a surreal and unreal time.  The magic of swimming in that lagoon was a moment of sanity in a miasma of madness.  I've had the urge to go back there many times since.

Visiting the dawn

Watching the sun rise is both magical and therapeutic.  You are drenched in beauty, and the inevitability of the sun rising and setting every day, whatever happens in our little lives, somehow puts things in perspective.  A couple of months ago I got up early to watch the sun rise on Dartmoor; it's something I've been doing on the anniversary of my mother's death for a few years, and now of course I've lost Felix it is even more important I do it, as a little act of remembrance and worship. Then a few weeks ago I went for an early morning swim with Amanda in Torquay (ok it wasn't dawn, we were a bit too tired for that) but there was such a sense of serenity out there, it was quiet and otherworldly and the sea held us in its gentle grasp.

The balm of the Dart

The River Dart upstream of Ashburton is so well known to me now it is like an old friend, and old friends provide comfort. During the last three months  I have been compelled more than ever to swim in its silky clear water, sit in its cascades and explore its beautiful rocky depths.  The Dart estuary, below Totnes,  I know less well.   It is a different personality, though of course related to its cousin upstream.   It slips in serpentine langour through the folding fields of the South Hams, gradually widening and becoming more saline as it gets to Dartmouth and the sea.   And now of course this bit of the Dart has even more relevance to me, as Felix is buried in Sharpham Meadow, one of those fields above the estuary.   When I visit his grave I often now go down to the river afterwards and swim below the meadow,  looking up at where he lies.

Loss

Swimming is a  way of losing yourself in the vastness of the landscape.  On Sunday I swam at Slapton where everything is enormous - the sky is huge, the sea stretches as far as the eye can see and the shingle is an endless line.   It's a very abstract place, in three colours, three stripes ahead of blue, dark blue and brown, the sky, the sea and the shingle.  The water was clear and I let it move me up and down the shore.  Then I floated and looked up at the sky.  It's that Hardy-esque feeling of being microscopic in the immensity of the world, and it's a feeling I crave at the moment, perhaps to try and make my loss less.  In the last few days I've been in Snowdonia where I climbed a large part of Cadair Idris in a quest to reach a glacial lake called Llyn y Gadair which lies in a bowl under the towering cliffs of the mountain.  It was breathtaking, and I felt a sense of relief on getting there and plunging myself into its icy waters.  

Up the creek

Judy has just moved, albeit temporarily, to Tuckenhay, a gorgeous village nestling by Bow Creek, off the Dart estuary, so it seemed only right to go and test out the water.   We walked along the bank admiring the elegant Jane Austen style houses on the hill on the other side, everything in muted February tones:  greys, browns and dull greens.   The water seemed to be heading out fast but when we got in there was actually not a very strong current (apart from in the middle) and we enjoyed swimming upstream and then floating back down.   The friendly curves of the hillsides down to the creek created a sort of secure feeling as we bobbed around in the middle.   It was chilly, at 8 degrees, though warmer than the Dart further upstream, on Dartmoor.  Afterwards Anna tested out her new rucksack, inherited from her father, which ingeniously combines a seat.

Swimming the stacks

 Looking at a friend's pictures on Facebook I could see the sea was flat calm and gleaming like a mirror: perfect conditions for a swim around the weird and wonderful sandstone stacks of Ladram Bay.  An impromptu plan was hatched, and a group of us met up in the car park of the local holiday camp and sauntered down to the beach, where it was indeed lovely, the sea was shiny and inviting and there was even some January sun.  We plunged into the beautiful clear water and swam round the headland into Wonderland.   The stacks stand like sentinels off the coast, rocky remainders of small promontories. One had a hole through the middle, through which we climbed and then jumped out the other side.  After about 15 minutes we started to get cold and swam back to the beach, leaving the magical kingdom behind.    

Pic: Ron Kahana

Pic: Ron Kahana

Pic: Ron Kahana

The Twelve Swims of Christmas

So far I have swum on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, and now today (the 27th)...so I reckon I'm well placed to aim for the Twelve Swims of Christmas.   So far all the dips have been freshwater and, ahem, very fresh, at around 7 degrees...but today we went to Westcombe Beach, where the sea was a much more forgiving 11 degrees.  It's one of my favourite coves, with pink and grey striped rocks in all sorts of sinuous shapes, and all manner of caves and rock pools.  It's a wonderful place to wander around and explore, especially at low tide, and you lose yourself in a weird world of rock.    After a good explore I then had a swim, saying hello to a seagull which was bobbing about nearby, and looking over to Burgh Island in the distance.  Pix by Alex Murdin.

Another trip to the Hindu Temples

Approaching the first cave (photo Aaron Kitts) 

I never tire of swimming at the Hindu Temples in Torquay.  They are a set of interlinking caves in the sandstone cliffs at Livermead; the writer Charles Kingsley described them thus:  "the fantastic rocks of Livermead, scooped by the waves into a labyrinth of double and triple caves, like Hindu Temples..." They are an extraordinary natural feature. On Saturday morning we arrived to find the sea calm and a stunning petrol blue.  The dark entrances of the caves beckoned us in and rock doves cooed above, roosting in the crevices, as we swam into the gurgling depths of the first cave.   The water swirled around in the second cave and I got a bruised knee, but I never mind a few bruises after a swim like that.

Stuart and Olivia 

Mark inside the caves

Pottering around at Heybrook Bay

We set off to explore the coastline between Wembury and Heybrook Bay.  It's a bit of the South Devon coastpath I've never explored before, and what a revelation.  The path is pretty much at sea level, and you walk along marvelling at the beautifully intricate pattern of rocky outcrops and numerous little bays, like natural lidos .  At Wembury Point, we saw a display board which said there was a holiday camp here in the 30s - complete with a man-made lido, the remains of which we could see.   The sky changed constantly, as it does on winter afternoons, with the 'eye of God' - the sun's rays - giving a dramatic appearance to the Mewstone offshore.   In Heybrook Bay, the water was incredibly clear and we had a deliciously refreshing swim, in which we explored in and around the numerous channels and pools.  A lovely afternoon out.

The old lido

The remains of the old lido today

Natural lido

Heybrook Bay from coastpath