Waterlog Reswum Welcome to Waterlog Reswum
Hello and welcome to Waterlog Reswum. This blog is all about following in the front crawl of Roger Deakin, swimming in the rivers, bays, streams and lidos he visited in his seminal book Waterlog. My mission is to experience the waters as Roger did, writing about and photographing them, exploring how they have changed and how attitudes to outdoor swimming have shifted since Waterlog’s publication.
“When I had first seen the words ‘Raised Beaches’ on the map, recurring like an incantation, forming a ribbon along the western shores of Jura, I immediately wanted to tramp over to this wilderness and explore them.” Past the Inver estate office, up a car-wide track, clad head-to-toe in waterproofs, we stride out towards west Jura. A light rain whips across the sound from nearby Islay, as deer gawp at… Read More
“The next swim, from a wooden landing stage of a boathouse on a little trout loch nestling in a purple bowl of hills, was a sheer delight. This loch had a shallow end, where the burn flowed in, and a deep end where it was dammed by a stone wall and flowed down a salmon ladder into the sea.” The briefest of breaks in the horizontal rain gives us our chance. Scrambling… Read More
“When you enter the water, something like metamorphosis happens. Leaving behind the land, you go through the looking-glass surface and enter a new world, in which survival, not ambition or desire, is the dominant aim.” A fractured wrist in a brace, awaiting plaster, has laid my swimming plans for this lengthy summer low. Having swum in 20 or so of the rivers, lakes, lidos and beaches in Waterlog, my trip… Read More
“The Wissey rises in a moated fish pond at a farm in Shipdham near East Dereham in Norfolk and quite soon runs through the never-never land of an army truing ground, forbidden to most of us for over fifty years, left undisturbed for months on end and, crucially, unformed. Thus insulated from modern agricultural pollution, the Wissey is one of the purest lowland streams in East Anglia.” The walk from… Read More
“The River Lark was known as Jordan, because people came from all over the Fens to be baptised by total immersion in its waters at Isleham.” Look up the River Lark on Google image search and the first picture you’ll see is of a beaming fisherman, torch strapped across his forehead, holding tightly onto a huge, snake-like pike. You could say this clouds my mind as I ease my bike… Read More
“I had entered a swimmer’s dream. People lolled half-submerged along the top of the weir, reading or sunbathing, while others paddled themselves in coracles, swam, dived, or just sat about in bathing costumes.” Led upstairs, through a warren of corridors and into the first-floor drawing room, the mill window is flung open. As the first of our three-man group throws himself forward and hurtles towards the water, my stomach lurches. Eased up… Read More
“I left my clothes near the bridge and walked barefoot on the warm sand along the over bank upstream for a mile and drifted back down, swimming gently with the current, pushing between the sensual weed, past more sandy bathing bays and sun-hollows in the miniature reedy dunes along the banks.” Leaving the car on a grassy verge just past Santon Downham’s iron bridge, the fast–moving clouds above Thetford Forest are threatening… Read More
“Approaching the Itchen along College Walk, I came eventually to the water meadows and two or three piebald horses grazing by the river. I vaulted a low fence, steadying myself on a PRIVATE FISHING notice, and crossed the meadow to a convenient willow, where I changed into bathing trunks and a psi of wetsuit boots for the return journey from my swim.” There’s a ‘first day of school holiday’ buzz in… Read More
“Hampstead Heath, and its enlightened management by the City of London Corporation, makes a useful working model of good practice both in terms of pollution and access. The Highgate Ponds, fed by chalybete springs high up in Kenwood, descend the hill and are segregated by tradition into the Women’s, Men’s and Mixed Ponds. Entrance is always free, there are simple showers and changing sheds, and each pond is maintained and observed by… Read More
“I returned through the meadows, swimming upriver against the gentle current to Mendham Mill, where the painter Alfred Munnings spent his boyhood.” Pulling into Mendham, past the Sir Alfred Munnings pub and up through hedge–lined lanes, our hopes of a mill pond swim in Roger’s footsteps are already looking unlikely. The satnav has warned us of private roads and as we park up, it becomes pretty clear that if we… Read More
Waterlog Reswum 