SELF | LIFE | THINGS THAT FEED MY SOUL

My Name Is Sally and I’m a Wild Swimming Addict

Confessions of a self-professed thalassophile

“I do, I do, I like to go wild swimming, I comb my hair with the briars and the bushes. He is to me like wild swimming; He gives me rushes…” — Wild Swimming by Martha Tilston

Take me to the city if you like. Or high up into the mountains.

But never, ever try to take me away from wild water. You never know what may happen, but I’m sure the result won’t be pretty.

Strictly speaking, I’m a thalassophile. But I do my best not to be strict about it.

In case you’re wondering what one is, a thalassophile is someone who is magnetically drawn to the ocean. For whom everything about the sea — the air, the visuals, and the water itself — makes one feel vastly better in themselves.

But I try not to be so strict when it comes to swimming, because any kind of body of clean water will usually make me feel like the mermaid creature I am usually concealing when on land.

As a girl who was spoilt by a childhood of warm seas and, later, holidays on the Mediterranean coast in Israel, I nearly missed out on possibly the best thing in my life — wild swimming in the chilly waters of England.

The first time I ever dipped a toe into the Atlantic ocean on the Devonshire coast, I was thirteen and on a camping holiday with family friends. It was a hot May half-term week and there were lots of children splashing around in the shallows on this beautiful beach I had found myself on.

Those frigid waters made me start. I decided that English children were all mad and that I would never, ever swim in that bone-aching sea again.

At the time, I never imagined I would be drawn back to live beside that ocean and forced to either make friends with it or ignore my instincts.

It was summer in South Cornwall. The weather was that glorious, clear-skied, summer weather with the sun blazing down all day long — the kind of weather that makes us Brits remember why we put up with the grey and wet for so much of the year.

Walks down the hill from the farm where I was living were a daily occurrence, sometimes for breakfast at the beach cafe, other times for an ice cream in the afternoon. But never for a swim — at least for me.

Being late July and with schools now on break for the holidays, the beach was busy with families, and the sea was dotted with happy people. Mad people, as I thought.

Yet I loved water. I always had.

As a small child, I’d lived close to the Indian Ocean in Tanzania and later Kenya. I’d learnt to swim in those wild, warm waters off the coast of Africa.

I’d swum in hotel swimming pools in Mombasa, Nairobi, Lagos, Kathmandu, Bali and Manado. I’d swum in rivers in the jungle of Indonesia and in the hill stations of India. We’d practically lived on the beach when we would travel to see my mother’s family in Israel in the summers, and I’d swum competitively with my local club near Oxford.

And now, here I was, looking at these crystal clear waters in rural Cornwall and they were calling out to me. Cold as they were, they were casting a spell, enticing me in.

One day, I could resist their call no longer.

Into that water I went, pushing off from the bottom, swimming out of my depth, the cold enveloping every bone in my body and making my breathing fast and shallow. But I knew I had to see it through to the other side, until my skin tingled and a sense of heat began to burn through me. And, eventually, it did.

That moment became a moment of liberation.

No longer a cold water virgin, I was now a cold water lover. First I was bought, and quickly became obsessed.

Since that first introduction, my life has been partly dictated by the requirement to swim in cold, wild waters. From Cornwall, I went to spend six months volunteering in Nepal, living beside the beautiful Phewa Tal, the lake at Pokhara, swimming daily.

Then came France where I lived beside an etang — a small lake. And in I went, morning and evening, every day.

While living in France I travelled to many parts of the country. Everywhere I went, I found clear rivers meandering through every terrain, from flat sunflower fields to vast, towering cliffs. The further from people, the fresher and colder the water.

And then my return to England brought me back to South Devon — where I first shocked myself in the cold Atlantic waters that later became my addiction.

With summer here now, I swim daily. We are lucky that we have outdoor community pools in every small town. But we are even luckier that we have coast and river too, mostly right on my doorstep.

Some years back, it began to become fashionable to go wild swimming. A book was published — a guide to all the best “secret” wild swimming spots in the UK. Many of which happen to be along the Dart, where I have swum now for nigh on twenty years.

The magical place you could only reach by scaling a padlocked gate and crossing a section of the river to end up on an island with a private beach and a deep pool in the main river, now became the focus of every aspiring wild swimmer clutching their copy of Wild Swimming.

The beautiful woodland that borders the river nearest my home, where I walk often with the dogs, and where I sometimes take a dip, is suffering massive erosion due to the number of people who come and claim their spot for the day.

The wild swimming fetish has taken over and everyone, along with their guidebooks, are in for the kill.

But no matter how many join the throngs of mad people in our enjoyment of that cold, fresh hit of river water flowing off the high moor, I seem to have mastered the art of finding quiet, lonely spots at the most perfect times, that no one else seems to have managed to spoil…yet.

Beach or river, I go to the places that didn’t make it into the book because they seem less desirable, being less off the beaten track, or assumed to be more frequented. So I find myself alone in places like this beach on a perfect morning:

Or a perfectly deep swimming spot at any time of the day:

Or here:

So, during these summer days, while I have work to get on with and family duties to fulfil, I find myself centring my entire schedule around when and where I can get my swim (or two) in for the day.

Strictly speaking, I’m a thalassophile. I’m particularly drawn to the ocean and, during the winter months, it is a massive mood enhancer. And swimming in the summer months, when life feels easy, the immense feeling of awe that overcomes me when I am swimming in that vast ocean and looking at the beautiful land from a distance, takes me to a place of utter bliss.

It’s well proven that the negative ions in the air by the sea — that increase with every winter storm — are good for our physical health. But there are many more mentally and physically healthful properties to the ocean which I wrote about some time ago.

But I try not to be strict about my thalassophilia, and the river helps; I take cold river dips to ease my cravings, and a swimming pool will also soothe that desperate need.

There are many things I could have become addicted to. But being a wild swimming addict hasn’t yet given me any harsh comedowns that other addictions can give.

So I’ll keep taking my daily hit.

For without it, I have no idea what could happen.