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.
“That evening, I went to Bungay in search of ‘Bungay Beach’, one of the town’s swimming holes, across the marshy wastes of Outney Common, where the river kinks into a two-mile oxbow.” The small beach appears just a few feet after we cross a broken wooden bridge. To call it a beach is perhaps a touch generous. More a sandy, gravelly inlet that shelves steeply into the slow trundling waters of the… Read More
“Dudley and I set off barefoot over the sandy boardwalk through the wooded dunes and emerged blinking from the shade into the great gleaming theatre of Holkham Bay. A majestic sweep of dunes delineates an endless beach where, at low tide, the sea is only a distant, whispering line of white.” A wallow in Holkham Bay’s shallows wasn’t part of the plan. Today’s trip was meant to take in a dip… Read More
“We sat facing other in rows, like labourers being driven to work in the back of a transit van, or nude commuters in the tube. Steam rises up from beneath, through the wooden slats.” Keeley and I had arrived at Ironmonger Row Baths on a fresh-feeling Saturday lunch time, our swimming kit tucked neatly into a tote bag. After a few cold water swims in the days previous, I thought it might… Read More
“I went in the next day with two or three dozen early-morning regulars, and for a glorious moment, during some lull in the proceedings, I had the entire sixty-seven yards of water to myself. The solitude lasted for a single blissful length.” Having made hard work of the bike ride up Haverstock Hill, followed by a bumbling attempt to enter via the exit gate, the water of Parliament Hill Lido comes as… Read More
“I had come down the path along the disintegrated cliffs from the magnificent ruined church at Covehithe. Each year, the path moves further inland across the fields because great hunks of England keep falling away in the winter storms.” A hazy spring sun hangs out to sea as we pull up by the ruins of Covehithe church. A coastal breeze is whipping up the sunken road, where a sign warns us ‘No… Read More
“About a mile downstream from Burford on the meandering footpath to Widford, I found the finest oxbow bend I have ever seen. Sheep grazed the meadows, and the cropped grass was in wonderful condition, springy and deep green. At the narrow turkey neck of the oxbow were two old pollard willows…I slid into the upstream side of the oxbow, and swam all round it almost back to where I had begun.” We… Read More
“Swimming without a roof over your head is now a mildly subversive activity, like having an allotment, insisting on your right to walk a footpath, or riding a bicycle.” It’s now almost four months since I swam the Waveney, the brisk wind and biting cold keeping me out of open water. And despite my best intentions (set out right on this blog no less) and the purchase of a rather natty wetsuit,… Read More
It’s almost three months now since I braved the waters of the Waveney and took my last swim in the strokes of Roger Deakin. In that time it’s gone from damp to wet to bone-crushingly cold and back to wet again. My plans to swim through the winter have been disappointingly disrupted through a combination of endlessly rubbish weather, a lack of a decent wetsuit and, basically, my being a baby about… Read More
“I was swimming ten miles from the moat, where the Waveney defines the border between Norfolk and Suffolk. It is a secret river, by turns lazy and agile, dashing over shallow beds of golden gravel, then suddenly quiet, dignified and deep.” Nowhere on my nascent journey swimming the rivers, lakes and lidos of Waterlog has been so dominated by the air of pilgrimage as my trip to the Waveney. Leaving Liverpool Street… Read More
“I had ridden here under my own steam, and here I was in the centre of London gazing up at the stars in the utmost luxury of a heated outdoor pool. It seemed the height of civilisation. yet this was no exclusive private pool; with a Leisure Card from Camden Council, you could get in for £1.” I usually associate London swimming with slowly easing myself into cold water and a post-workout… Read More
Waterlog Reswum 