I hardly know what day it is I am enjoying this so much and I expect plenty of you have been very busy watching the Olympic swimming events this week too, and marvelling at all this Phelpsian prowess in the pool. Clare Balding's intelligent and thoroughly researched commentary for the BBC (have you seen all her notes and the highlighter pen?? ) have certainly helped me get the most out of it. Heck I am praying the BBC cancel Clare's holiday if she thinks she's off duty after the swimming and just force her over to the track and field alongside Hazel Irvine to get us through the coming week. That lovely, slightly mischievous but self-effacing sense of humour is a triumph, all perfectly pitched. Last night, after Clare had asked the question, we learned from the Thorpedo (loving Thorpey, thank you for lending him to us Australia) about the water temperature...
'Look, it's between 25 and 26 degrees, much colder than a public pool which is usually around 30 degrees.'
But those warm chlorinated indoor pools apparently have a lot to answer for where the decline of outdoor swimming is concerned, and we learned this and much more at Susie Parr's talk in the dovegreyreader tent at Port Eliot Festival.
Our very first guest, the author of that very beautiful book The Story of Swimming and Susie charged with the task of persuading me that this wild swimming thing just might be for me. In fact Susie, such a picture of health, could have convinced me without uttering a word, exuding calm and poise and a serenity that suggests all this dipping into freezing cold water has real benefits.
Agreed with Susie beforehand, my opening gambit went a bit like this...
There is nothing Susie likes more on a Sunday afternoon on late September than to head to a beach with her swimming costume..
She will cross the shingle in barefeet and it hurts, before wading into the sea, the beach shelving away steeply and the cold making her gasp...
Susie will swim and float and watch the tankers heading to France and then swim out further...
Her fingers will go white and numb at which point Susie emerges dripping and shivering and make her way back up the shingle...
A quick rub down with the towel and on with the clothes, pulling things on over sticky skin and then a sit down with a cup of tea from the Thermos...
Susie...I have just one question...why??
Susie's talk was fascinating and as we chatted our way through why she loves outdoor swimming, why it may have gone into a decline and what may put people off, I had a long list ready.
... fear (me), health and safety (me), feeling self-conscious(me), feeling shy and slightly embarrassed (me), not wanting to get hair wet (me), bugs and raw sewage (me). The decline reflected in the arrival of the indoor swimming pool and the package holiday to warmer climes.
It was good to talk about the revival of outdoor swimming and Roger Deakin's book Waterlog which somehow re-asserted the right to swim and set legions of people on the trail of the best wild swimming locations. The popularity of the Wild Swimming website a testament to this success story.
This was a really warm and relaxed first session, Maggie W had arrived and was busy knitting too...
There were lots of questions from the audience and the event set the scene wonderfully for sessions to follow through the weekend, and my sincere thanks to Susie for agreeing to talk.
I had added help and multiple distractions hand quilting the quiltsuke, so it really is a minor miracle it emerged intact and complete
In the end there really was only one patchwork block to make for Susie and that was Lady of the Lake and the knitsuke...a wonderful knitted mermaid..
And was I convinced to go for a wild swim??
Well of course I was... I just haven't found a way of plugging the hairdryer into the car battery yet.
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