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Connected Eating Is To Eating As Wild Swimming Is To Swimming
New Pool Hollow is a 25 minute walk away. It’s a small disused reservoir. It was reliably a quiet place for wild swimming until featured in the Sunday Times as a quiet place for wild swimming. During the lockdown summer I met my friend Liz for a weekly dip.
Liz wrote about it once on her blog “The plunge is breath-taking, awakening, vital. It confirms my body to my senses, pushes the air out of my lungs and into a shout.” Afterwards we pitched the camping chairs and table by her car and brewed up for breakfast, shooing away the sheep.
Once upon a time wild swimming was just swimming. You saw a river and shed clothes and jumped in. Pretty much like we did.
But that’s rubbish actually. There was never in fact a time when you just jumped in, at least not for everyone. For starters some people are disabled, and so it’s not quite as simple as this fairytale makes out. Maybe someone was held under water once and has been terrified of water ever since. Maybe there’s leeches. What about segregation, gay bashing, Modernity’s other bids for historical amnesia. Or your neurology or something else means crowds are difficult for you to manage. It could be body shame that stops you or your kin from stripping off. Or you just don’t want to have to field crass comments about a stoma, or fatness, or…
