Last week I started to notice my age. Old isn't the right term, I'm still only 40 after all, but the changes that come with age. Not the bad ones, I mean the richness of life and people that comes with time. Is aging all that bad then or does it bring greater joy to …
Sea or reservoir. Which one might be safer?
I think we have a topsy turvy approach to hazard perception when it comes to outdoor swimming in the UK. It’s OK to swim at the coast where conditions continually change with the tide and weather, there are waves, obstacles and creatures that will sting you but it’s not OK to swim in inland water’s …
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Environmental Consideration and Outdoor Swimming
As an inland outdoor swimmer in England there are very few places I can swim without the threat of being asked to leave. Landowners can and do restrict access to water, I‘ve talked about this before here Breaking the Law to Swim. One of the reasons that’s often used to exclude swimmers is the potential …
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Are You A Swimmer?
Society likes labels. Man/woman, working/unemployed, old/young. We like to categorise and put things in boxes. I guess it helps our brain to compartmentalise, sort some order from the chaos. When we label things they’re often grouped together, positive or negative connotations about that group are often applied to all that “fit” in that label. Grouping …
Outdoor Swimming – What to Wear……….Or Not!
The wealth of kit and clothing available to outdoor swimmers seems to grow by the day. It can often be overwhelming, particularly for those new to swimming outdoors. As a coach and year round outdoor swimmer I often get asked by new swimmers “what should I wear to swim outside?” People always want a simple …
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Dip a Day November 2020 – Covid Special
At the beginning of November as the 2nd national lockdown for England was announced I embarked on a challenge to dip in outdoor water on each of the 30 days of November. Lots of people do these kind of challenges, often in December or January but as I explained in my starting blog here, November …
Winter Swimming…………In The Land of Covid
In January I wrote a blog about winter swimming. How wonderful it is, why just a few minutes of immersion in cold water is enough to make you smile for the whole day. Much of that smile wasn’t created by the cold water though. It was created by others. By the people I would meet …
Dip A Day November
November feels like a bit of a neglected month. It’s not December, the month of Christmas madness or January, the month of resolutions, fresh starts and general depression at it being damp and cold with a couple more months of that to deal with. Lots of people do a dip a day in December or …
Re-visiting grief
This weekend I got to return to somewhere that feels like home to me. Somewhere I used to spend every Thursday evening and Saturday morning from May to September. Somewhere I’d only briefly been into since July 2019. Toddbrook Sailing Club. It was where I helped to run our happy, friendly, welcoming open water swimming …
The End Of A Strange Few Months
Today my boys went back to school. The return to school after the long summer holiday is always a time of mixed emotions. Joy that I have a little more free time to myself again but also sadness that they’re not pootling around me all day. I often have a little wobble and need to …
Open Water Wheway 