Wild Swimming
My Unforgettable Swim story started on the River Culm in Devonshire, England, which runs through my dad’s farm.
At the age of around seven, I started to pioneer little swimming adventures. I put together a ‘treasure map that would dictate the route we would swim through the farm. We would start at the top, and come under a humpback bridge where we would shout a lot because it gave this incredible echo and then down over a waterfall.
It was such a brilliant journey, and on hot summers we used to do it again and again. It’s a feeling that I try to replicate today in wild swimming – that joy of exploring the undiscovered. That’s been behind this whole passion to set up the Outdoor Swimming Society and to write ‘Wild Swim’.
Wild Swimming is that entire joy we used to have when we were kids, when we were just running round and free and happy – it seems to be replicated at any age when we go swimming in the river. All the cares in the world disappear.