Here's To The London Chilly Dippers

Bobbing Along #3

Another season of self masochism in the icy ponds and reservoirs of London? Completed it mate — and what a season it was. I've been reflecting this week on what it is that makes cold water swimming so important and life-giving for me, so do read on if you wanna hear my thoughts.

Massive props to every single one of our social swimmers who came down for a chilly dip over our autumn / winter Social Swim Series. It's been a cracking debut season for our social swim club here in London and my spidey senses are telling me that we are just getting started...

Swim Club — Our Spring / Summer Calendar Is Here

You may have seen that we released our spring / summer social swim calendar last week, just in time for that perennial harbinger of spring — the turning forward of the clocks. I don't think it's any secret that I'm kinda doing this all on the fly / making things up as we go along, but for our first summer calendar I'm pretty stoked.

Our regular monthly social swims will continue as they have over the winter — second Sunday of every month, 10:30am at London's West Reservoir. Next swim is on Sunday, 13 April so make sure to whack that in your diary.

There will be no swim in September as my calendar is completely manic and to be honest it feels right to have a lil hiatus at the end of summer. Also, our May social swim (Sunday, 11 May) will be starting a little later around 2:00pm due to the fact that we have our Swim Club Seshwaa the night before (see below).

We also have a selection of sumptuous summertime side quests on the menu:

• Swim Club Seshwaa // Saturday, 10 May — An opportunity for us to all come together and, well, have a big ol' seshwaaa. Precise details are TBC but I'm thinking it will be some kinda pub-into-out-out situ, probably involving a nice beer garden of some description (and maybe a beverage or two).
• Day Trippers // Sunday, 20 July — A day trip out of London (probably down to the south coast somewhere) for a relaxed hike, sea swim, picnic, pub vibes and then back up to the big smoke. More deets to come.
• Sunset Sauna Eve // Wednesday, 17 September — A swim club classic. We've done a couple of these now at the Community Sauna Baths in Hackney Wick and they always go down a treat. Rumour has it that a new community sauna will be opening up in Camberwell over the spring, so we might need to give that a whirl.

Cold Water Swims, Put Your Front Brain In the Bin

I'm coming around to thinking that our rational front brains — wonderfully useful as they often are — might be really holding us back from a full experience of life. I think there is a temptation (perhaps arrogance?) to assume we can tame our emotions, our instincts, our fundamental human nature with logic and thus control the world around us. Not so, say I.

What's all this got to do with cold water swimming? Well the beauty of flinging yourself into an icy reservoir is that it leaves no room for rationality. In order to do it in the first place you really need to be able to ignore that stern internal voice yelling at you to run the other way, and once you're in the noise shuts off almost entirely.

Our swim club ain't afraid of a bit of chilly water.

Instinct and emotion take over and all of a sudden you are experiencing a raw, unfiltered sensation of being alive. It's quite powerful and, for me at least, cures all misconceptions that I'm somehow in control of what's going on. The cold water demands acceptance. Pair this with an almighty release of serotonin, dopamine and endorphins (i.e., all the good stuff) and it makes for a pretty euphoric experience. 

I've got a lot more to say about all of this but I think I'll leave that for a separate lil post. See you at our next swim!!

Sax

(P.S. the next one of these I do will be from somewhere on the road between Cornwall and Devon — gonna release a full itinerary for the trip shortly in case anyone wants to link on the way)