West Bay - Friday 26th November, 10.30 am

SW

Air temp 2 degrees

Sea temp 9.5 degrees

With a great forecast MG and I arranged a 10 am meet at West Bay, delayed at the last minute to 10.30 due to my hangover – why do I never learn that port is deadly? A beautiful bright sunny day. None of the previous days evil north wind.  Still, I was packing the scuba boots and a hot flask just in case…

The shingle at the back of the beach was frozen in ridges and crunched gently underfoot which was a bit worrying. After the warmest welcome I think I have ever had from The Mascot, MG and I took the chance to dissect the previous days swim while enjoying the weakly warming sun (and maybe putting off removing our many, many layers for as long as possible). MG’s swim-hat consensus was that its just too discombobulating – when wearing it she could not feel the rest of her body properly.  While I don’t have that problem with my toe-saving boots, we got to comparing other mind-body mix-ups such as not being able to see properly when its too noisy (or maybe that’s just me?).

The beach was gloriously empty, the sun shining and the sky deep blue. It was going to be good. Eventually we plucked up courage and stripped off, laying out our clothes in re-dress order across the beach so as to allow a rapid post-swim re-robing. Today we were both a little more cautious and slowly waded into the chilly water. The backwash from a gentle wave sucked us in to chest depth which caused much swearing and cursing at which point MG noticed we had an audience of 8 workmen from the beach re-profiling team. Damn, that meant we had to be brave so we launched ourselves out in a vain frenzy of keep-warm swimming. Initially we kept our heads above water and it did feel easier than yesterday. My hands were cold but I had no bingo wings or stabbing pains and the boots kept my toes toasty.

After 3 minutes or so we swam back to the beach and ran about in the sun to warm up – then back in, this time plunging under the almost clear blue. Much easier second time around – I think the moral for us is that when the temperature drops we need to get in slowly, no more diving starts now its down to 10 degrees.

I came back to dry land to open up the bar but MG returned for yet another 3 minute stint. Afterwards, there were no black fingers, just scarlet bodies and without the wind, dressing was easy and we barely shivered, except for a few uncontrollable shakes that made holding the hot drinks a bit tricky.

A truly blissful swim. Walking back to our cars, The Poor Mascot’s tongue stuck to a block of ice as she tried to take a drink from a bowl kindly left out for passing dogs. That made us feel a little bit brave. Bring on the snow.