Need to clear your head? Take a swim on the wild side.
Britons have long enjoyed a love affair with wild water swimming and wild bathing and the trend is re-emerging but often a secret passed on by word-of-mouth. Bathing and swimming feature in literature, art and music from the earliest days. For the British Romantic poets, wild bathing and swimming held specific importance. This intellectual movement that originated towards the end of the 18th century in Europe, saw nature as the most sublime phenomenon, capable of generating profound feelings of awe, ecstasy or reverence; emotions that almost transcend rational thought, words or language.
Romantic poets went bathing and swimming in the sea, rivers and lakes, convinced that communing with nature would inspire their work. As a child, William Wordsworth bathed in Derwent water in Cumbria, his experience informing his sense of connectedness with nature. Shelley was irresistibly drawn to the water and mesmerised by its mystical properties, bathing whenever he got the chance. He never learned to swim and eventually drowned, aged 29, in the Bay of Spezia in Northern Italy when his boat went down in a sudden storm. Lord Byron was a dramatic, daring and brave swimmer, jumping into Venetian canals and swimming away from romantic entanglements. He felt his sporting achievements were far superior to anything he achieved in his writing and sought to make wild swimming Bohemian and enigmatic. Samuel Taylor Coleridge gives an account of sea bathing in his lesser-known poem, ‘On Revisiting the Sea-Shore, After Long Absence’. First published in the Morning Post in 1802, Coleridge had been suffering ill health and instead of using salt water baths, as advised by his physician, he plunged into the sea. He wrote in a letter: ‘I bathed regularly, frolicked in the Billows and it did me a proper deal of good’.
"Wild swimming is a time-honoured, natural high."
Contemporary wild swimming and bathing is beholden to Romanticism. Wild bathers believe today, as they did then, that cold water is a time-honoured cure for depression and promotes superior physical health, as well as sparking joy and creativity, which scientific studies confirm.
Whilst many wild swimming spots will be temporarily closed due to COVID-19, it’s worth keeping an eye out as restrictions begin to lift and more spots around the country open up. Here are some to try:
The Serpentine Swimming Club - although applications for new memberships are currently suspended due to COVID-19, the swimming club has reopened to existing members.
Brand new and in-the-know Instagram account @inittoswimit offers new locations across the UK for more seasoned wild swimmers to try out this summer.
Take a look where you can swim nearby to where you are on the Wild Swim Map UK.
After swimming the entire length of the Thames, Lindsay Cole discovered a newfound love for swimming and is eager to share it with others. Lindsay offers the chance to discover some of the UK’s hidden spots for one-on-one dips, group swim days and wild swimming retreats. Her website reveals more about what and where she loves.
If you’d like to take a skinny-dip but are frightened of scaring the horses, Sea and Stream is dedicated resource for sustainable wild swimming products and Randy Cow have the men covered, even making board-shorts from recycled plastic.
My final word on this watery wonder, make sure it’s safe unless you want to go out like one of your literary heroes and that your body has time to acclimatise to the temperature of the water, because it will surely be one of the most invigorating experiences out in nature you will ever have. CN Traveller magazine also has a list of cracking wild swimming spots, visit them for a virtual wild swim and to whet your appetite.
