Wild Swimming

Last week, on a beautiful, bright, sky-blue Autumn day, I went swimming in the local quarry. 

It’s actually quite a famous quarry called Vobster Quay. Famous because it is one of the deepest freshwater inland places to swim, dive and free-dive in the UK. At 40 metres, it doesn’t sound all that deep, but imagine swimming to the bottom of an Olympic diving pool and you will see and feel what a mere 5 metres feels like! 

Vobster is a safe, sparklingly clean and incredibly beautiful quarry with sunken wrecks of a large aircraft, a caravan, a yacht, two metal wheelhouses, and the famous Crushing Works - a towering structure the height of a 2-storey house. It even has a spooky 14-metre-long tunnel at 35m deep that is by all accounts, terrifying! But forget all that because I just went for a swim.

Since I was small, I have loved being in the water. There are dozens of photos of my sister and I as children, splashing about in the sea and swimming in rivers. My parents were adamant about us learning to swim from a very young age, and both my parents used to take us to the local swimming baths. It was my Father’s job, however, to take us every Sunday morning while my mother prepared lunch (different times folks, different times). I have really vivid memories of these mornings… to the highly chlorinated water resulting in red-rimmed eyes, to seeing the odd child wearing a verrucae sock, to never being able to dry myself properly in the tiny cubicles, to being dusted with talcum powder. After we came out of the changing rooms, with matted hair and twisted damp trousers, we were always allowed a hot chocolate from the vending machine, and to this day, I still associate hot chocolate with swimming.

The majority of our summer holidays were spent in France, Cornwall, Wales or the Outer Hebrides – always by the sea – and the rest of the time we would go to our school’s open-air pool. The pool was never heated, and even on the hottest days I remember our lips turning blue, fingers and toes wrinkled, covered with goose-bumps and shivering uncontrollably. My mother would simply give us a vigorous towel rub to get the blood flowing, followed by a slurp of Heinz tomato soup from a thermos flask, and we were back in again. We were also lucky enough to live in California for a few years – when I was 10 and my sister was 12 – where we used to perform synchronised swimming routines in the local pool, play Marco polo, or have endless handstand and diving competitions to entertain ourselves.

As I grew up my passion deepened. My first holiday without my parents was at a friend’s Aunt’s house in northern Corfu, aged 16. We spent the days eating local peaches and homemade yogurt, drove around in a battered 2CV trying to find undiscovered aqua-coloured coves where we could snorkel, and at night we would go skinny dipping, mesmerised by the phosphorescence. The following summer I went island-hopping around Greece. As three girls from single-sexed private schools we were very naïve, taking up offers from the local middle-aged fishermen to go out on their boats to swim topless in the deep Mediterranean water, seeing extraordinarily colourful fish and diving for sea cucumbers. I loved it so much that I even got a job in the local bar in exchange for free booze, counting up the takings each night as the owner was too inebriated. I’ve subsequently been all over the world, from Costa Rica to Egypt, the Caribbean to Italy, Sri Lanka to Australia, and always spent half my time in the sea. 

Not being scared of open water or deep water is the key, but even I have had my moments. I watched the film Jaws for the first time in the late 70’s, and that did put the willies up me for a while. As did water-skiing off the coast of Long Island when I was 15, and a great white shark being caught the following day exactly where we’d been. The scariest moment was when I was in Australia with my mother in the late 90’s. I swam quite far out from the shore, joking that I hoped there weren’t any sharks about. As I turned to swim back to the beach, I saw my mother frantically waving and shouting at me, then pointing to something behind me. At least I now know what would happen in the case of a shark emergency because I completely froze, treading water very very slowly, while trying to remain calm. I then realised my mother was laughing and smiling so I turned around and swimming beside me was… a penguin!

It’s safe to say that I wouldn’t be happy going on a summer holiday unless there was a place to swim but living in good old Blighty, and not being that close to the sea, means I have to make do with other bodies of water, no matter what the temperature. You have to love the feel of cold water and embrace the benefits… boosting your metabolism and immune system is fantastic, but for me, it’s the sense of calm that swimming surrounded by nature brings. Mindfulness in water if you will.

So, back to last week. I went with my cousin to the quarry and we both undressed to our swimming cozzies, put on our hats and goggles and walked down the ramp into the cool crisp water. It was 18ºC, the warmest it’s been all year apparently, but we soon realised that we were the only ones not wearing a wetsuit. We were given incredulous looks from fellow swimmers and divers as we gasped and splashed around for a bit, our bodies adjusting to the temperature. And then we swam and chatted as we got into the deepest and darkest part of the quarry. Even I realised that wearing goggles might not be a good thing when all you can see underwater is black. If I did see anything lurking in the water beneath my feet, I’m not sure I would remain quite so tranquil. 

There are 3 rules at the quarry. Firstly, you have to swim with a buddy just in case you get into problems. This totally makes sense because once you set off from the concrete jetty there is nothing to grab hold of… the quarry has sheer stone sides! Also, the water is very chilly, and many people aren’t prepared for how fast that coldness can spread through the body, and the quarry is very deep so there is nowhere to touch the bottom. So, you have to be a good swimmer and have a certain amount of confidence in your abilities. The second rule is you have to wear a hat so that you can be spotted from land in case you disappear, and thirdly, you have to give an emergency contact number, just in case you die! 

My cousin and I went a second time on Saturday, another gorgeously warm and sunny September day, and the place was packed. Well, packed for September. I counted about 36 divers, 10 free-divers and 12 swimmers. What’s interesting is the difference in the 3 groups. The divers are probably 95% male (nice!), coming in all shapes, sizes and ages. Eavesdropping on some of their conversations, there is a lot of loud chat, bravado and one-up-man-ship… what they’ve seen, where they’ve been and how deep they’ve gone. The free-divers are a much leaner and quieter bunch, mostly in their 30’s and 40’s, walking around with serene expressions on their faces. The swimmers are a totally mixed bag, some training for competitions, some to get fit, and others for pure enjoyment. 

I realised my cousin and I are a very good match as buddies because we pretty much swim as slowly as each other and are pretty hopeless doing front crawl. As the triathlon athletes power round in their wetsuits looking very focused and capable, my cousin and I look like ladies of leisure, doing a slow breaststroke while gossiping. The whole thing is seriously addictive though. The feeling when you finally get out, a little breathless, fingers and toes a bit numb, skin pink and tingling, is pretty exhilarating. Then a slightly pathetic dribble of a luke-warm shower in the stark wooden changing huts followed by, of course, a hot chocolate. Everyone is so friendly too, from the swimmers and divers to the people that work there, so I think I have discovered my new obsession.

The guys that run the place, say there are only a few hardcore swimmers who go all year round without wetsuits, so we will see if we can become part of that rare statistic. We are planning on going every Monday morning, until we simply can’t hack it. The trouble is, I also have an open-air heated swimming pool option at Babington, just down the road, where the showers are hotter, the towels are warm and fluffy, but the hot chocolate is 4 times the price. 

And just to show that I’m not making this all up, here is me in the water. 

NOTE:As an addendum to this post, I have now decided I am raising money for Cancer Research UK’s Stand Up to Cancer campaign, by taking on the October Sink or Swim Channel Challenge. 

To reach 21 miles on my own, I will be swimming 43 lengths of a 25m pool every single day for 31 days. It may include open water too, depending on where I am. Having only recently re-learnt the front crawl and only managing 30 lengths non-stop so far, this will be quite testing. Please go to my charity page on https://fundraise.cancerresearchuk.org/page/juliets-giving-page-40 

if you feel like donating. Thank you.