The wild swim!

Today was a big day: I swam in Rydal Water along with a group of other (relatively) new open water swimmers, in a session organised by Head for the Hills in Ambleside.

Regular readers will know this has been booked for a good while and I've really looked forward to it. The grim weather forecast for the week was slightly concerning but thankfully the weather picture changed and it turned out to be a dry day with sunny spells.

The session began an introduction to some of the key points of outdoor swimming, including a safety briefing. Given the recent spate of deaths in open water in the last couple of months, this felt important; I was reassured to know that the buoyancy of the wet suits we were loaned meant we would float even if we were unconscious.

We headed off to Rydal Water and a handy little 'beach' at the Eastern tip, where the fish is on my OS Mapfinder image:

After the inevitable challenge of getting into wet suits, we ventured cautiously into the somewhat brown water. Apparently it was around 20C, near the top of the temperature range, thanks to recent warm weather. In our very snug-fitting wet suits, we were well insulated from it and even a 'nesh' person like me, who is very susceptible to the cold, didn't feel cold for well over an hour. Without a wet suit, I think 10 minutes would have been my limit.

One coach swam with us and the other was on kayak duty. This was very handy when a tired swimmer wanted a tow!

After some short practice swims and some coaching on stroke technique and sighting, we swam over to the island and back, altogether swimming perhaps 1km during our 90 minutes or so in the water. The water felt pleasantly clean away from the muddy beach. It was a completely new experience to be in the lake with the ducks, looking at the surrounding fells from a different perspective.

One surprise for me was that the snug suit actually felt quite constricting which was not very comfortable when I was puffing and panting after what felt like a long swim. Of course I could breathe adequately but at times it felt like quite hard work! A few moments of sculling on my back looking up at the clouds gave my breathing time to slow down.

The session has given me the confidence to try open swimming independently, although I would always want to have someone with me, either swimming or nearby to rescue me if I got into difficulties. It was a fantastic experience, thanks to a great group of fellow newbies, the friendly support of Pete and Claire, and a lovely fine day in Rydal. I couldn't have asked for a better introduction to a new activity.