Long Timber Pool

Tavy Bluebells

It’s my first swim in ages owing to a back injury, and I feel flat and fed up. Today is a grey day, slightly chilly. Honey and I amble down to the Tavy where my spirits are elevated by the scent and sight of bluebells, surely the most stunning shade of blue, set off by vibrant spring greenness. The river is shaded by the little cleave, and looks flat and dingy by comparison to the beauty nearby. There’s a transitory whiff of sewage, but it’s not from the water and there’s no obvious source so I decide to risk it.

Honey Wades

Long Timber Pool

The water’s cold – certainly no more than ten degrees. I slip literally on the silted rocks beneath and swim around till I feel warmer, staring up at the sky through abundant new leaves. Honey fossicks around Long Timber Tor, rather a grand name for what is a small conglomeration of rocks and gnarly old trees that barely rises above water level.

I climb out and change, transfixed by the little gardens of plants emerging from slender cracks in the rock.  A warty, grey-green lichen covers the surface and lends a Hammer Horror monster air.

Walking back we’re followed and bleated at by a hilariously horned and close-coated ewe who I’m guessing was a bottle-fed, with an equally amusing lamb whose tiny pointed horns make him look like something from Narnia. Honey is utterly bemused. Anyone know the breed?

Chilly Waters

Warts and All

Narnian Lamb

Crazy Ewe

Bigbury Blethering

Honey Surfs

Bigbury on Sea, Bank Holiday Monday; blue skies and wisps of cirrus, a bank of fog over the horizon, and the usual cheeky gale. It’s low tide and light glints from the sand beneath the shallows and illuminates the sea so that it glows turquoise.  We set up on the sand and chat while a few of our friends swim round Burgh Island, some for the first time. I’m hugely envious, but unable to join in owing to my shoulder injury.

Light Splinters

Blowing Bubbles

We go to meet the first swimmers, but they take off up the stream towards the Lifeguard hut like Triathletes. Then we discover the gang think they might have lost one of our newbies – but the Lifeguards know exactly where he is, and sure enough he appears in the distance having become over-excited and taken the long route round the easterly reef.

Finally it feels warm enough for a bob – although I’m acclimatised, being unable to swim properly means the cold grips fast. We run in and there is no pain at all for the first time in ages. The actual water temperature is around 10-11ºc, practically boiling point by recent standards. I mess around and play with Honey. Tiny waves break and splinter the light around us. It’s like being on a cloud.

Afterwards we continue to blether, wrapped in the smoke from barbecues and washed by the hubbub of people at play. 

WWS’s Bare Naked Foot Returns

The Dog Days Are Over

Limpets

Honey and I arrived at Wembury and paid an extortionate £4.50 for the privilege of parking before wandering down to join Teri and Michele de la Mer who were staring intently at what appeared to be a nicely-coiled turd, but which turned out to be an adder; another had just vanished through a hole in the wall. The tardy arrival of spring had brought all of us out to bask in the sun.

Director

We set up at the far end of the beach, about a hundred meters from the only other occupants, but were quickly approached by the  National Trust man who threw us off for daring to have a dog with us. Apparently there were some children due. I notice he didn’t throw the polluting traffic out of the car park, or close the lane in case any of them were run over, or spray Dettox around the rocks over which the sewage outfall discharges in wet weather.  Bearing in mind I pick up Honey’s mess, the sea temperature is still less than ten degrees, it’s term time and mid week, I can’t see any problem at all with Honey being there. We pay huge water bills because of the cost of cleaning our beaches, and yet we’re not allowed to use many of them with our dogs from May to October. I live in the country, I have dogs. I wouldn’t subject her to a hot day in high summer, but why can’t I go there at this time of year, or in the evenings? End of rant!

Criminal Canine

Anyway, we moved on up the coast path to a rocky gully where we sat and chatted and swam in pale turquoise water while Teri filmed with her Go-Pro in Slow-Mo. I only managed about ten minutes, but it was so beautiful with the ripples focusing sunlight over smooth, quartz-striped pebbles and rocks. Entranced by the water swirling and lapping around the limpets on the rock where we got in, I was shivering by the time I got out.  Apparently limpets wander across the rocks in very slow motion and try to lever each other off. They reminded me of little Daleks.

Michele Goes In

Beauty

Sh Sh Sh Sharrah

We’ve had several days of positively spring-like weather, and so we set off for Sharrah Pool warmed intermittently by sunlight through the bare branches. Following the late freeze there isn’t so much an unfurling of leaves as a tentative peeking of leaf buds which continue to hug themselves just in case.

The Double Dart is not too full for the time of year and her depths are clear and amber, although there is still a suspiciously chilly-looking greenish-blue tinge around the rapids. We have two temperature takers who say 9°c and 8°c, but it feels colder than that to my stunned body which attempts to shrink inside itself as I slide in. Several of us shriek. Honey cheats by wearing her fur coat.

I swim up and am more or less acclimatised by the upper cascade, where JJ forges across and clings to the far side. The water is gorgeously foaming and sparkling in the sunshine. I go in off an incredibly slippery rock and flail past in the rapid grinning and sinking as the energy fizzes through the needles of icy heat in my skin. I pass everyone else on the way up, faces dancing with light reflected from the choppy surface, hair ruffled by the cheeky gusts of wind funneling down the gorge.

Afterwards we scoff a trio of cakes: gin-soaked lemon drizzle courtesy of JJ, chocolate from Helen, and Jackie’s colourful dried-fruit fest. I’m grateful for the warmth of my lovely Mammot hoody until Rachel, wrapped in a capacious white robe and carrying a Lightsabre, tells me I resemble a sperm.

Frisky and Frigid

It’s Michele de la Mer’s birthday bash at Wembury. Despite the stormy forecast for 9-14′ surf a large shoal of wild swimmers shows up, including a couple of new fishes. Foaming, frothing sea and silvery-grey skies makes it difficult to distinguish between the two. We leap around and fall down holes, dive under breakers and laugh. This is the most fun I’ve had in ages; the wildness somehow lightens the relentless cold of the water, and I can almost imagine that a very late spring might be just around the corner. 

Brown Sea at Tinside

Flooding, gales, biggish wavelets…we decided to have a look at the Hoe before swimming today, and worked out that the incoming tide and the flow from the Plym were pushing water towards the dodgy area from where untreated sewage might flood. The water was brownish, and there were a couple of areas of flotsam and ripped weed but we only saw one log, and that was of the wooden variety. I sniffed carefully, and there was not even a whiff of poo. So Richard, Rosie and I shot in, swam out a little way, bounced around, and swam back in with absolutely no heads under the water just in case. 

Nippy Tinside

A wonderful swim this morning in a pale turquoise sea that suddenly transformed to the colour and texture of mackerel skin as we headed out to the buoys. It felt cold, and no wonder – it’s a mere 7.3°c, the coldest so far on Pauline’s sea temperature graph (see the Devon and Cornwall Wild Swimming Website link on the right of this page). I had a proper cold water tan, and got the biggest after-drop of the year having stayed in for longer than was perhaps sensible. Luckily I was able to shiver my way down to Corinthians where I sat on the radiator and consumed a large cream tea. 

Not That Kind of Moon Gazey

Those of you who follow this blog will know that our numerous attempts at Moon Gazey swims tend to be scuppered by good old Devon weather. This evening we were somewhat optimistic, this being the Imbolc Moon that heralds the start of spring, the spawning of frogs and the lactation of ewes. The Met Office on-line map even showed a slither of moon peeking from behind a white, fluffy cloud at precisely the time of our swim.

And so it was that Honey and I stood in the car park near Venford in the dark. As our eyes adjusted, the pewter almost-glow of the water silhouetted the forestry evergreens that for some reason always clutter the shores of Dartmoor reservoirs – it’s as though someone decides that if there’s one man-made thing, no matter how beautiful, a few hundred thousand foreign trees sucking the life from the ground and the light from the sky and upsetting the ecosystem won’t hurt. Still, it’s only a National Park.

Sophie, Matt and Queenie arrived and we toddled through the trees to the shore, where we changed in the frigid air and wondered what the water temperature might be. Sophie told us it had been just over one degree in the Dart on the previous day. A brief glow on the eastern horizon elicited a Moon Gazey frisson that swiftly morphed into the headlights from an approaching car.

In the end, the moon was provided by Queenie, who with her wild-swimmer’s twisted logic had decided that it would be less hassle to skinny-dip. Honey paddled, snorting softly, while the rest of us sidled in. The cold was almost indescribable, and we all struggled and howled. In the absence of the Moon Goddess there was nothing to distract us from the pain of icy were-wolf talons of water shredding our thighs. I would honestly have got out had the others not been there to apply that all-important peer-pressure.

We swam for a couple of minutes, chuntering, and then changed in the gloom before hurrying back to the cars. Half an hour later as we arrived home I still had frozen feet and an internally-radiating chill.

Porthcurno Performance

Gazing down over Porthcurno beach from the path by the Minack theatre I feel the urge to throw my arms wide and burst into an aria in celebration of its indescribable gorgeousness. It’s a place where endless skies meet endless seas which slam into the cliffs and rebound in a seething mass. My hair is blowing horizontally and my coat is luffing loudly. There are rips pulling the water back out to sea. Should I be sensible, or obey the compulsion to leap into the ocean at once?

Far below in the car park, Matt has already decided to ‘have a look’, so the two of us change behind a slightly sheltered rock where my hair is merely at forty-five degrees. We watch closely for a bit, and decide on an entry spot away from the area where most waves are crossing and where there is no rip. The seas’s atomised in the gale and hits us way before we touch the foam. A couple of Grey Seals are surfing further out. Wading in, the undertow pulls the sand from beneath our feet and there’s an unsettling sensation of movement while the landscape stays where it is and the sea churns.

I’m on my arse before the water’s over my knees, and we’re hit by wave after wave. Matt performs a star jump. As they rear up ready to break, the rollers are illuminated from behind like stained glass in the rarest pale turquoise. Legs aching as we fight the undertow, we’re panting and laughing and diving through, over or under the breaks. We stay well within our depth; there’s no way we can swim safely out. Finally we body surf back in, landing inelegantly on the sand in an exhilarated heap. It’s only then that I notice the cold.

Prussian Blue

A couple of posts from deepest Cornwall where we’re spending a weekend. We descend the steep path to Prussia Cove, unsure which of the forks to take. One vanishes through a rabbit-hole in the shrubs so we head that way like Alice in Wonderland. Aptly, the sea glows Prussian blue between the rocky reefs.

It’s icy cold, gently undulating and luminous in the shallows where patches of shell sand reflect sunlight. We can see each other’s bodies beneath the surface even in the distance. We float back to the shingly shore through a narrow gap in the rocks which we name Aphrodite’s Passage, in the spirit of romance engendered by such pulchritude.