Wild is free, wild is cool, Coolio cool. A bracing, tingling, ice sizzle, enveloping, sometimes skull freezing experience.
Cascading water and lush green over-hanging trees. You can almost kid yourself, these past few weeks that the Birks of Aberfeldy, a forest leading up to a magnificent waterfall that inspired Rabbie Burns, was, in fact, a tropical rain forest. If this is climate change, and it would just stay like that… As many of us have no doubt pondered, on a flat grey day, what our land would be with sun, long stretches of it, popular, too popular, maybe way tooooo popular, we console ourselves. The Tay, however, has been more reminiscent this summer of the rivers of the south of France. Visitors and residents alike, basking on rocks and cooling under the delicious canopy of trees. We have this year in particular, in search of our own personal sense of freedom, I think, and later the glorious weather, been moved more than ever to take to our own waters. Even a certain man of the cloth, a true water lover it would appear from his expeditions down the river for charity, jumped out of a tree, a local haunt with a swing rope into the water, from the VERY top.
Delicious, deep, dark pools and lochs, beautiful and serene, however, can hide underground caves and currents that can draw you down further than you would ever wish to go.
If you’re new to it or have only been a sporadic, high summer, once in a decade dipper like me when it’s only really, really hot – take it easy.
Like most pleasurable activities…
Bubbles: great in a bubble bath, all light and frothy tumbling down into a white foam from a waterfall or over jutting rocks mingling with water all calm and luscious cuts your buoyancy, and you can sink like a stone. Stay well clear, too, of any pretty blue-green algae which can form in warmer weather. Toxic for your pet and harmful to you.
What’s good for some folk: some fantastic places are recommended through groups such as ‘Wild Swimming – Scotland’, which is great, but know your own swimming limits. What’s okay for a strong swimmer or a higher water level brings stronger currents and risk on a particular day. All fine for some, might not be for you or for me.
The mindful, habit-forming, mental and physical health recommendation is to start slow and build up over some time. Just like taking a cold shower: you wouldn’t want to just suddenly stand under one full blast for 5 minutes. So be prepared to go tippy-toed in, whether a strong swimmer or not and stand about for a while and wobble on stony ground. You’ll get water shoes.
Stay in the zone: don’t be tempted to wander out into the current, however shallow. Check it out beforehand, where you might land if you did because, like a dog swimming in the current, it’s downstream, the place you would most likely be able to pull in.
Seek counsel from local wise ones and swim groups on safe places, water temperatures and wetsuits. The Scottish Canoe association gives notification, via SEPA, of water releases from main dams. Going with someone makes sense and having someone on the bank with a throw rope. If you did, find yourself in trouble, the RNL recommends, ‘fight your instinct to thrash around. Lean back, extend your arms and legs. If you need to, gently move them around to help you float. Float until you can control your breathing. Only then, call for help, swim to safety or continue to float until help arrives.’
Me, I’ve always loved a Lido, fond memories growing up and where I first took my daughter and freedom – an outside space in central London! This year, the concrete ghosts of an older Scottish tourist industry remerged. Tidal pools, regenerated by the communities of Pittenweem, due for its official re-opening on 7th August and beside it in St Monans and others are to follow.
Swimming in the natural, however, you do it…and in the natural is fantastic, is your own personal journey. Far off the beaten track, within the boundaries of a sea wall, along the bankside of a river or in a loch with a group it is a rather special, freeing and uplifting experience.
