Thursday 29th March, 1.30pm, Hive Beach

Perfect weather - hot, sunny, still. The sea is flat calm, pale blue, dark blue, turquoise. Its easy to be fooled into thinking the swimming will be easy but last weeks freezing toes are still fresh in all our memories...

We clamber over a recent rock fall looking for a quieter section of beach - the warm weather has brought everyone to this beautiful spot. The cliffs are looking very crumbly as MG, KH and I nervously leave our stuff below the least cracked areas and hope for the best. Last weeks slow entry was torturous so we opt for more speed today. Once our feet have been suitably numbed by the gentle waves, we are into the deep sea. Its cold but too blissful to complain. We all swim out and can even manage to talk and enjoy the scene. The water is crystal clear and I risk brain freeze to go under and dive down a few feet before it gets too painful.

Coming out to warm in the sun we soon defrost and are ready for a second, longer dip. This time we are really swimming and there are clear echoes of summer. After a third brief dip (the cold is catching up with us now) we resort to sun bathing, high on cold, clear water and oblivious to the potentially lethal falling cliffs above.

SW

Lands Edge, A Coastal Memoir - Tim Winton

Radio 4's book of the week last week was 'Lands Edge, A Coastal Memoir' by Tim Winton. I caught just 5 minutes of it on wednesday but heard a powerful reasoning for the psychological draw of the sea and particularly in this case, free-diving (free-diving is just holding your breath and diving as far and as long as you can, unaided); 

"… Free-diving in the open ocean is mostly a form of forgetting… a form of desertion, retreat, hermitage, a stepping aside from terrestrial problems to be absorbed into the long moment. ..

The sea is immense, potent, trackless but above all, neutral. I used to console myself that if the sea drowned me, a shark took me or a blue ringed octopus or sea wasp or stone fish had its impersonal way, then at least there was no ill will involved.

Of all the water occupations, free-diving is the most forgetful. You turn your back to the land, the sun and slide down to where all sound is flattened to chirps and rumbles. The deeper you dive, the heavier is the blanket that insulates you. You wilfully forget to breath. You sidestep the impulse and your thinking thins out to the moment at hand.

It’s a religious feeling; on the sea-bed or gliding mid-water with everything sharp in focus and my body aching with pleasant urge and hunger. I understand the Christian mystics for moments at a time. I too feel swallowed, miniscule, ready. The diver, like the monk however contemplates on borrowed time; sooner or later you have the surface to return to."


SW

Various

Holme  8.30am JJ

Thick Harr hiding Old Hunstanton

Hand bitingly cold

Cogden 3.00pm MG and KH


They said it on the Today programme but I refused to believe it until I saw it with my own eyes - bluebells in March!

The second day of beautiful warm weather brings KH and I out of our burrows and reunited on the water's edge. There is an army of fisherman viewing us from the panoramic beach, but with a few forceful words I force KH into the water, having been shown the way by both Percy and The Mascot who both plunge in. It is brutal. But, again, on the third dip, it becomes bearable and almost pleasurable; the clearness of the sky and the water are pretty brilliant. But there's no possibility for talk or gossip; staying alive is all we can manage.

We feel very pleased with ourselves back on dry land and plan a return visit the next day. However, overnight KH falls into a fitful slumber haunted by the gurgle and roar of the undertow on the Chesil Bank, and the next day sees neither of us in the water.

But we've started the ball rolling and the next swim will be soon.....



Fri 23rd March, West Bay, 1.30pm

It's a beautiful day, the sun is shining, the birds are singing and so on and so forth. After a film festival meeting held OUTSIDE (only in Dorset could we be this privileged - I doubt they organise the Oscars like this) I'm feeling very spring-like and send up a signal to SW who has kindly agreed to come and pick me up  (my - disputable - broken arm is making driving difficult). He wisely suggests that we meet at the town tip, what could be nicer. After disposing of six bags of rubbish and buying a mirror for a lonely goose (does it need more explanation?!) we are on our way beachwards.

Conditions are perfect. Mental conditions less so. But we change and advance. The water, I'm not going to lie, is absolutely freezing. Without boots my feet are instantly burning agony. We go for the extremley slow approach, gradually going in inch by inch with several total retreats and discussions and strategy reports. We agree that this water is cold enough to pass the "misted up glass" test. Eventually - and it really is eventually - we make it in. We do this three times and by the third time it really is ok - I am able to swim (in circles mainly, due to my broken arm) breathe, feel my feet and shout bossy reports back to SW. The water is clear and still, the beach is empty. If it weren't so friggin cold this would be paradise. We are a little demoralised as we remember ourselves this time last year skipping merrily in and scorning all those who claimed it was cold; in fact, looking back at the blog this isn't quite true, we swam a lot but never claimed it was warm....

Scoffing cakes and chatting in the warm sun, we plan for future swims, with never a shiver of cold. The only after effects this time - apart from the usual glow of well being and sense of hysteria - is a sudden onset of paralysing tiredness; SW reports a half hour snooze, and I have a very happy doze in my deck chair too. Always worth it!

Alastair Sawday in Penzance

Couldn't hope for a better advert for winter swimming than this.... the agony and the ecstacy (ps we definitely need to get a waterproof-strap-on-head-video-camera for the summer....). Thanks to AC for drawing my attention to it.

 

The March hero curse has struck us all down... I have sort of broken my arm (inconclusive, long convoluted story) SW has an eye infection, JJ is crippled by emotional trauma.... we all need to pull ourselves together and get back in the water pronto.

MG

Sat 3rd March 2012, Hive Beach

Stunning day, basking in the warm sun on the beach but daunted by annoyingly big waves.

Refusing to be thwarted by Chesil Bank again (it happens all too often) I made a mad dash for the water and jumped into the froth between waves, head under and out running again before the next big wave hit. Not sure it counts as a swim but lovely to get wet - and then dry off in the sun after.

MG was more sensible this time but the feeling of spring is most definitely in the air and the promise of lazy long swims is tangible.

SW

February 27th, Brighton, Bloggers Unite

MG

We plan a last minute mini-break, a jaunt to Brighton to meet SW and take the only chance to swim that our distance has allowed this month (I seem to be in London semi-permanently, he in Brighton). I call up JJ and suggest she join. Not batting an eyelash at the prospect of a seven hour train journey from Norfolk to London to Brighton and back again for what, let’s be honest, is likely to be 30 seconds in the 5 degree water, she agrees with alacrity. That’s dedication. The foundations are laid. Sharing my room with JJ the night before the expedition, her voice pipes up in the small hours. “It can’t be as cold as that river, surely?” Me “which river?” JJ “any of them?”. It’s not boding well, but despite trepidation the morning dawns and after a hearty breakfast, we get ourselves and our mountains of jumpers, towels and snacks on to a train and down to the coast.

Brighton is looking battered and dingy, the pier an unsightly tangle, but somehow, despite these things, it can’t shake off it’s down market, London-on-holiday appeal. We cower by the entrance to the pier waiting for SW, chip fat and frying odours permeating our every pore. SW approaches looking surprisingly cheerful, and fond greetings and introductions are exchanged – he and JJ have never met, in the three years of this blog! We clamber down to the side of the pier which SW says is least dirty and begin stripping off layers before there can be any faltering. Small talk is discouraged by me. Then the approach! It really does feel cold to me this time, especially without boots, and the brown slapping waves in the creepy shadow of the pier are not helping. But when has a little bit of terror stopped me? I’m in and away, gritted teeth and stolen breath. We all make a brief foray, JJ quite staggeringly brave as she hasn’t been in since November, and emerge before I lose my toes to stand in the shadows gasping. Then another little dip; this time I manage some backstroke and two dips under which causes a spectacular brain freeze. That’s quite enough of that I think, staggering back over the agonising pebbles and collapsing on to my towel. But we’ve done it! And as the feeling comes back, the familiar high dawns and we stuff ourselves with ginger cake and cinnamon hot chocolate with alacrity, laughing at our own jokes without shame. This blog should be called Laughing at our Own Jokes. The weight of the world is lifted off our shoulders by those four minutes in the water, it’s quite extraordinary.

SW is off back to class having pointed us towards the shops, and basked in the warm air emanating from Jack Wills, around which we cluster like kittens to a  fire. JJ and I attempt to shop, but after the high comes a slump which leaves us prone in a cafe for several hours before we mange to peel ourselves from Brighton and slumber back to London. I am zonked, but in a lovely, content way.

Good work team! A united cold plunge in the name of the blog. Heroes indeed.