Five years ago I undertook 65 swims in different places at the age of 65 years. I have written a book about it, entitled ‘Memories like Water’. A lot of things happened in that year - little did I know what kind of journey that would be. Going to swim in places I know, in places I swim in regularly, and swimming in places new. Lakes, rivers, oceans. Revisiting places and the memories that have gone with them, revisiting the memories of those swim places and reinventing them. Memory laid upon memory. In this podcast I talk about my swimming journey, and describe the first of these 65 swims, which takes place at the West Oxfordshire Sailing Club swimming lake. At the time, this had a swimming loop marked by six buoys of around 800 meters stream-fed by the River Windrush, soft to the touch, clear to the eye. Now it has a swimming loop of a kilometer. It is a delightful place when the sun shines and it has its charms even when it does not. I can swim here any time, whenever I like, any time of year or time of day. Wherever I go to swim beyond here – the River Thames up and down, the coast, to London, to Zurich or Copenhagen, and waters further away, I come back here and it accepts me, and by bathing in it, I accept it again.
Comments