By Sara Ward
It was a cold Saturday morning and I was standing, socially distanced, from a friend whilst we hugged thermal mugs of tea and watched pairs of women in swimsuits, com-plete with woolly hats and neoprene gloves and boots, walk down the slipway into the cold water of the creek. Not long after, a small group of men arrived by bike, clad themselves in wetsuits and, after their swim, ran off to warm up; triathletes in training we guessed.
As we took in the scene, a woman on her morning walk approached us laughing ‘Look at you, standing around drinking tea, you should be swimming as well…’
We turned and smiled explaining that we’d already been swimming, we were in the water at sunrise and were just warming up after-wards before heading home.
If you’d told me this time last year that I would be swimming in the River Thames during the coldest months of the year, even whilst it was snowing, I wouldn’t have be-lieved you. I mean, I’ve always liked swim-ming, but the blue waters of a Greek swim-ming pool would have been my preference for a leisurely float.
As a child, I swam regularly, both at school and on boating holidays, and would happily wade into the sea from mudflats as well as beaches. I’d scuba dive on holiday if the op-portunity presented itself, but 2020 made sure there was none of that, so when a friend told me, late last summer, that she’d started swim-ming in Bedfont Lakes I begged her to take me along.
There is something about swimming outdoors in a natural space, rather than a constructed pool, that allows us to literally float in nature. To join the coots and the ducks in the shade of a willow tree, to share the space with swans as they sail with their wings held slightly open, to look out for the kingfisher and to watch the water levels rise with the winter rains and drop in the warmer summer months.
In a managed swimming lake with lifeguards, we can swim alone – taking in the beauty of our surroundings, the long strokes of our arms in rhythm with our meditation as we escape technology, screens, noise, buildings and ve-hicles.
In the river, recognising the dangers of cur-rents and tides, we swim with a buddy for safety. For fun, we may ‘swoosh’ entering the river upstream of our exit point and allowing the current to carry us along, with our clothes and shoes staying dry in a tow float secured to our waists bobbing behind us.
The beauty of Ferry Square in Shepperton is that it allows safe access to swim in the creek that’s slightly off the main river flow and has hardly any current making it a gentle safe swim.
I’m still in my first year of Open Water Swimming, but am already clocking up some pretty memorable swims; at dawn swimming towards the sunrise, at dusk with bats flying overhead, swimming in the snow with flakes settling on our hats and feeling the water warmer than the air, then my first ‘ice swim’ (defined by the water temperature be-ing below 5c), it was 3.6c for me…
Sara loves living the country life in the city and has transformed their west London home into an urban smallholding, complete with 22hens, three colonies of bees, a kitchen garden and a week-ly micro-bakery. She shares her skills with others through her series of courses and schools programme.