Floating Page 3

  Much had changed here since Roger visited and played a game of water polo with the locals. It had closed in 1997, not long after that match, and did not reopen until 2010, as part of a private leisure centre which charged hefty fees for members and non-members alike.

  On a late August afternoon, a cold shower presaging the onset of autumn, I forked out £5.65 and made my way through the beautifully refurbished changing rooms and into the stunning space in which the bath, first built in 1850, was housed. The barrel-vaulted ceiling created a great echo as swimmers chatted on the narrow sides, where once there had been bleachers for excitable spectators to cheer on gala participants.

  The rebuild had ensured that these had gone, along with the training pool out the back. The whole thing was now run by Better Leisure, a company operated as part of the GLL social enterprise, and while the Friends of Marshall Street Baths had succeeded in getting this beautiful building reopened, it had come at a cost. This was not the council-run, community-minded centre it once was.

  The decimation of affordable facilities for local people got to me. I believed strongly that such places should be open to all, regardless of wealth. It felt to me that this was indicative of London as a whole, a marvellous pulsating city which had been repackaged and sold back to those who could afford it with scant regard for those on the margins. Social cleansing is a strong term, but it felt as if this was what was happening here.

  The pool could no longer be seen from the narrow footpath which ran along Marshall Street, and it was office workers and media types who came here, not local residents. Paying almost £6 for a swim, just a few pence less than the minimum wage, was surely not what was intended when the baths opened more than a hundred and fifty years ago as a place for the public to swim, wash, relax and clean their clothes.

  The whole place felt like a commodity. Something for ‘consumers’ rather than somewhere with society’s well-being at its heart. While GLL said it reinvested any surplus it made back into its service, loftily dubbing its own work ‘fair trade leisure provision’, it felt as if the poorer residents of Westminster were being squeezed out.

  But I was here and wanted a swim badly. I plopped in and slowly began to breaststroke my way to a kilometre. I followed the neatly tiled black line along the bottom, my arms aching as the metres passed by.

  Marshall Street was stunning. But I couldn’t help but feel that its rebirth had been handled incorrectly. That those who had written to MPs to complain of its continued closure in 2001 had been cheated out of the baths which they so clearly loved. I left frustrated, ready to find a swim that was less restricted by the ways leisure centre managers seem to think we should exercise these days.

  Across town at Highgate men’s pond the crowds were sparse, despite it clearly being one of the last warm days of summer. Perhaps it was because it was midweek. I loved swimming at the mixed pond across the other side of Hampstead Heath, but I was determined to stick to Waterlog dips only. Roger’s decision to opt for the single-sex pool, coupled with the fact that the mixed was now shut for the season, had forced my hand.

  An older gent towelled off in the corner of the metal changing shed as my friend Joe and I nudged open the wooden door and got ourselves ready for a cooling immersion. Joe was a good friend, former colleague and fellow freelancer, not to mention a highly skilled, barrel-chested swimmer. He was always willing to leave his desk behind for some kind of adventure. Previously that had meant the two of us going to the pub, but he didn’t need much convincing that we should maybe take a bit of exercise before guzzling a few indulgent pints. After a few solo swims, I was glad of some company.

  I had told Joe about my plans to retrace Waterlog, but I hadn’t told him why. I made out that it was just a project on the side, a small something, a hobby to provide light relief from the regular work that I had come to resent. Sharing my anxiety, even with my closest friends, was not something I felt ready to do.

  Scrawled in chalk on the blackboard was 19°C, next to the arrow pointing to the ‘Nude Sunbathing’ area. Not feeling brave enough to bare all, we both emerged from the changing hut out onto the long concrete jetty. The water temperature hadn’t dropped sufficiently for the lifeguards to bring the ropes in close, as they had been when Roger came on a cold November afternoon. There was no coconut matting to warm our feet either, the ground sharp and rough on the soft balls of my feet.

  We reached the cold metal steps which descended into the green-brown water. There was only one other swimmer, dragging himself along the far perimeter rope. Joe lowered himself in first, screwing his face up as his balls hit the surface. I felt like going back to my bag, wrapping up and heading straight to the warmth of the nearest saloon bar.

  Geeing myself up, I followed Joe in. I had little idea of how to gauge temperatures, but there was no way this was 19°C. It felt far colder, especially as low scudding clouds now obscured the sun. I had read Roger’s description of Highgate that morning and remembered his advice: swim fast between buoys. I set off in my smartest breaststroke, my goggles steaming up within seconds. I managed a single, long loop of the lake, before draping myself across a roped life ring. After a short breather, I headed off again.

  This time I looped my goggles around my wrist and swam head up. I was joined by a great crested grebe, its shock of Mohawk feathers standing brightly against the greying sky and murky water. Pootling along together, it made me realise why I loved wild swimming. It wasn’t just about finding a cure for the anxiety which dogged my mind, but steeping myself in nature and the outdoors.

  I’m no naturalist. What knowledge I have of birds comes from the RSPB’s online bird identifier and an ability to bullshit around those who don’t know as much as me. But I wanted to learn more and spend more time with these creatures, to get to know them intimately, developing some true knowledge in the process. Plus there was no way you were ever likely to swim with wildfowl in a Fitness First training pool. The grebe took one last look at me before spinning itself around, swimming off and taking a dive after some unseen prey. His disappearing act made me wonder just what else I might be sharing the pond with.

  There is a silky quality to the water at Highgate and at the Hampstead mixed pond, which makes these two unlike any other swimming hole in the capital. The large lidos are all shot through with chlorine, meaning there’s always the whiff of schoolday swims, a stench you can’t flush from your nostrils. The ponds on Hampstead Heath lack the serious feel of the Serpentine too, where triathletes and competitive swimmers go to train for long-distance swimming assignments. Delightful as the fresh water of that Hyde Park lake is, swimming in water that is often overlooked by pedaloes laden with gawping tourists is not quite as relaxing as spending some quality time with some of Britain’s most beautiful waterfowl in London’s finest park.

  Joe and I climbed out of the men’s pond after an ample twenty-minute dip, a slight shiver juddering through both of us as we made our way back along the jetty. Joe was desperate for a hot shower and wondered aloud if the basic cubicles here might have one on offer. The lifeguard nodded with a smile and waited to hear Joe’s yelp as he stood under the inevitably icy blast. Joe blinked in shock as he emerged.

  ‘It’s good for you!’ said the lifeguard, returning to his small hut with a chuckle.

  By now Joe’s shivers had reached shuddering point and we dried ourselves quickly, repairing to the pub to plot swims outside the city. I felt happy in the moment, my anxiety temporarily alleviated, swimming my only concern.

  Following Roger’s footsteps in the rest of the UK was going to prove challenging. And not just because of the extreme nature of some of the swims (descending into Hell Gill in the Yorkshire Dales and negotiating the Fowey estuary in Cornwall were just two dips I planned on leaving until the very last opportunity). My lack of a driving licence was clearly going to be an issue in getting to the most remote locations of Roger’s journey and I knew from the start that I was going to be reliant on the kindness of fellow wild-swimming
acolytes, of whom at this point there seemed to be very few.

  I could, of course, learn to drive. But my urge to swim Waterlog was too great and learning would take up precious time. I just knew that getting behind the wheel was going to prove tortuous. I hadn’t done so for six years, since I spectacularly failed an intensive driving course while working for a well-known car magazine, my first proper job in journalism. I could still hear the intense road rage of the instructor, belted out heartily to fellow drivers in a broad Norfolk accent in exasperation at their lack of patience.

  His hectoring of other drivers only served to turn me into a nervous wreck, wildly stomping on the clutch thinking it was the brake, swerving through traffic or stalling on roundabouts. He would smoke roll-ups as soon as we were out of sight of his office, wafting his inexpertly assembled creations in front of my face in the tiny car. I didn’t have the heart to tell him to stub it out.

  After almost crashing into a parked car, he broke the inevitable news that I wasn’t up to taking my test that week. I let him drive us back to the centre and never saw him again. The thought of turning to one of the activities that made me most anxious of all in order to complete a quest to beat my anxiety seemed absurd.

  Anyway, my inability to perform this most basic of tasks also made my Waterlog challenge that bit more interesting and a lot more social. I decided it was an obstacle to revel in rather than rectify. Working alone from home and with many of my oldest friends not living in London, part of me hoped this would be a way to rekindle friendships and enjoy the simple social buzz of old times, when we’d skip lectures and hang out. Everyone had responsibilities now, but swimming together would be a way to subvert them, for a few hours at least.

  However, for my first non-London swim, I decided that rather than find a willing driver I would choose somewhere close to a train station that wasn’t going to require an overnight stay. Cambridge, and Grantchester in particular, seemed like the perfect place to start.

  It was a hot and sweaty day as Joe and I made our way from Cambridge station towards the Granta. The meadows on the outskirts were dotted with grazing cattle and a keen breeze whipped up as we reached the river’s towpath and walked out of town, the rumble of the M11 growing in the distance. Coming here for my first non-London swim felt right for all kinds of reasons. It was the place where Roger pored over old maps at the university library, laying plans for his huge sweep across the UK. It was the river of Rupert Brooke and Lord Byron, a wild-swimming spot steeped in literary history, where I imagined people whiled away their days and forgot their troubles. And, most importantly, it was close to the renowned Orchard Tea Rooms, where I fully intended to eat a gut-busting lunch and guzzle tea in a deckchair once the swimming was done.

  This was my first river swim and I wasn’t really sure how to go about my it. I did know for certain that I wouldn’t be following Brooke’s example and getting in naked. The poor cows of Grantchester Meadows didn’t need to see that.

  Roger had ploughed happily up and down this stretch, where the Cam and the Granta merge. His predilection for lengthy river swims, leaving his bag tucked in beds of nettles, seemed idyllic if a tad impractical. My anxiety about having to walk back to Cambridge in a pair of wet shorts and nothing else, begging a free train ticket for the ride home to King’s Cross, was far too great for me to stray too far from my precious, warming clobber.

  Instead of a long, downstream paddle, Joe and I opted to duck in under the shelter of an overhanging willow, the tentacles of its roots swaying with the current. I thought of pike and a chill went through me. My toes being nipped was my primary concern, although a whack from a punt pole or oar was a close second in my thoughts as I dropped my feet onto the muddy lower banks and felt the water lap at my toes.

  Christ, it felt cold. Far cooler than Highgate just a few days before. I waded in waist high and was all set to glide into the billowing reeds as a noisy flotilla appeared around the river’s bend. A pair of canoeists were quickly followed by a punt. Each one of the occupants, decked out in buoyancy aids, made idle chatter and passed comment on the increasingly large goosebumps on my arms. I tried to stop shivering as the last of them went by, waving a goodbye and wishing us luck. Joe remained on the bank, donning a pair of brash, luminous board shorts and peering into the dark brown drink.

  With nothing but my own inner voice to stop me, I launched forward and swam with the current. I banished all thoughts of errant pike nibbling at the flash of my pale feet and called out to Joe to come and join me. I disappeared around the corner and heard Joe’s ‘hnnng’, followed by a splash as he dived under the surface. This was followed by much swearing about just how cold the Granta was.

  The current moved deceptively fast and I let it take me, my timid, head-out breaststroke transformed into a great big gliding flight down the central channel of this pretty, narrow river. Joe was far off when I decided to turn myself around and see how he was getting on. The going was much tougher heading upstream. From up on the bank the Granta had looked as if it was moving at a leisurely pace, but now its pull felt strong beneath me. If I was going to master river swimming and conquer the Medway, Fowey and the myriad others Roger had bathed in, I was going to have to get used to swimming against the current and teach myself to read water better.

  Joe was swimming a proper, head-under breaststroke, creating huge waves which thwacked against the deep muddy banks and came back to slap me on the face. I left him to it, rounding the corner just as a flash of orange and blue darted above me and shot into the far bank, close to fenced-off farmers’ fields. My first kingfisher. I’d caught the briefest of glimpses, but it was unmistakably that most colourful of birds. I felt elated as I swam back, braced and ready to dry off in the brief glimmer of sun on offer.

  Despite succumbing to extreme shivers, I was on a soaring high as we walked the winding banks of the Granta to the sanctuary of the tea rooms. It was blissful. Perhaps it was the kingfisher. Or maybe just the fact that I’d spent too many minutes in the cold river. But I had a huge swell of hope about this project. That it wasn’t foolhardy. And that swimming in rivers was going to be even more fun than leaping into more benign waters.

  After demolishing a huge scone and vast bowls of jam and cream in the company of a scruffy robin, hungry for crumbs, Joe and I left the Granta behind and returned to normality. Cambridge proved a huge shock to the system after a day spent splashing in its watery meadows. The station felt too crowded, the train cramped, its toilets broken and reeking. But I was ready now for anything Roger could throw at me.

  CHAPTER TWO

  September

  Burton Bradstock, Dorset – The Oasis, Covent Garden

  After my Granta swim I had let my thoughts drift from my wider Waterlog pilgrimage, taking myself off to Hampstead with Joe and making the occasional trip up the road from my flat in Camberwell, where I had recently moved, to Brockwell Lido. Summer was passing me by. An old friend from university sent me a message on Facebook, saying how much she loved the idea.

  ‘There’s just one thing,’ she wrote. ‘Haven’t you started this a bit late? The weather’s bound to be shit soon.’

  She wasn’t wrong. The first taste of autumn proper came not long after my train arrived back in London from Cambridge. There was a noticeable dip in the air temperature, accompanied by the need to wear a jacket even on smash-and-grab trips to the local corner shop. Every time I picked up Waterlog, read another passage and found another swim I was going to need to do, I looked out of the window at the small corner of grey sky visible from my office window with a growing sense of dread. This was going to take far longer than I had anticipated.

  The worry of such a lengthy trip led me to start making lists of swims. Lists soon begat spreadsheets which in turn begat arbitrary deadlines. Colour-coded documents told me which swims I had done (green), which swims I had to do (white) and which swims were no longer possible (red), due to lidos either being closed for good or damaged by extreme weather. Rather than
setting a deadline for each one, I began telling everyone that I’d be done with the entire project by the end of the following summer. If Roger could do it quickly, so could I. I couldn’t see it at the time but I was already taking the joy out of things.

  Setting unnecessary deadlines, holding myself to them and then beating myself up when I ‘fail’ to meet them was one of the professional pitfalls that had made me so miserable in the years prior to my trip. And here I was turning what was supposed to be fun into work, therefore tying up all my self-worth with the project. It wasn’t exactly a healthy state of affairs so early in the undertaking.

  Poring over my plans after Grantchester, I managed to push away thoughts of rushing to get things done for long enough to realise that I could get in a Waterlog swim while on a short holiday Keeley and I had planned in late September in Lyme Regis with my best friend Tom and his girlfriend Emily. Tom and I met in our first year of university, bonding over a mutual love of mawkish Americana songs and doing shit impressions of each other.

  Tom didn’t need much convincing when I told him about my idea of driving around the coast to Burton Bradstock for a swim and maybe eating some locally-caught fish at the excellent Hive Beach Café afterwards. Tom loves outdoor swimming. Indeed, this is a man who once pulled his jeans on over wet swimming shorts after a brief dip in the Thames near his home in Oxford. On that occasion we sat in the pub for an hour drinking, his cream-coloured trousers staining an ever-darker shade of brown around the crotch. The reason? He hadn’t wanted to get changed in a grotty public loo in Wolvercote. Tom doesn’t care what others think, even if it involves sitting in warm river water while having a beer.