I haven’t done much swimming this summer. Some summers I’ve been in the water early in the year – in the late 2020 spring/early summer of lockdown and furlough and glorious weather for two months, I swam in Angle Tarn and Hayeswater in about May or June. This year it was too cold and grey: I’m not one of those brave all-the-year-round souls (running warms me up; after a swim in cold weather I will feel cold to the bone for ages). Also people just seemed to be busy, me included – and I’m not too sure about the wisdom of going swimming on my own, though I have friends who do.
However I haven’t finished my list of lakes and tarns to swim in as part of my 6 at 60, so when there has been decent weather and an opportunity for a swim then I’ve taken it. Not long after I’d got back from Paris, Penny and I walked up to Scales Tarn: anyone who’s been reading my blog for over a year will know that we started to walk up the hill to this tarn last year after I’d run the Ambleside 14km trail run, but I had quickly realised that my legs weren’t too happy about it (we ended up in the river Caldew instead, and the heavens opened just as we got out to get changed). This year I was less ambitious.
There’s a steep ascent up to a rolling open plateau with views down into the next valley, before you take a rocky path for the last bit up to the tarn itself. Like so many tarns in the fells, it’s nestled away hidden from sight until almost the last minute.
I had read in another blog that it was really cold: it wasn’t in fact too bad (with a wetsuit) but it does get deep very suddenly – you can swim around just above where it shelves away and see the sudden drop – and the deeper areas were definitely far colder than the shallower ones. I even went back in without my wetsuit on for a bit at the end. The walk itself was lovely as well, and we watched walkers continuing up on to Blencathra along one of the edges (not somewhere you want to be on a windy day or in mist – I remember when I first moved up here I seemed to hear regular reports about walkers getting into trouble on Blencathra’s edges).
Somewhere that Hannah and I had spoken about several times was the North Sea at Tynemouth, and so again when the opportunity presented itself Anne, Laura and I drove over to the East to pick up Hannah and carry on to Tynemouth, to swim in King Edward’s Bay. We’d checked the water quality first: the beaches and water at Tynemouth and at Whitley Bay are Blue Flag standard whereas apparently at times sewage gets put into the sea at Cullercoats, further up the coast. The beaches of the North East are, as I wrote in my post about Bamburgh and Dunstanburgh castles, also lovely – clean golden sand. Again with wetsuits on the sea didn’t feel too bad and we stayed in for ages, just chatting and letting the waves lift us up and down, and swimming for short distances. The water was really clear and as I got out I realised that it was the first time since having Covid that I’d actually felt ‘myself’ again. We drove along to Whitley Bay and ate fish and chips in a shelter by the beach, watching the sea and a ship disappearing towards the Netherlands. It was a magical afternoon.
Not long after that Penny, Laura and I went swimming in the river at Penton Bridge, soon after a rainstorm. The current was quite strong so we had to be careful, but it was fun to be in the river and to swim around.
There had been a fair amount of debate about whether we should hold Wastfest this year: people felt that it was a long way to go, especially if the weather was a bit dodgy. Although the second year we had gone it had been raining and we’d felt a sense of achievement, we didn’t want to go through all that again: partly as getting dry in the rain isn’t the easiest. However we agreed that it was definitely the best place for a sunset swim followed by a picnic, and so we kept our fingers crossed about the weather.
As we left Brampton it was raining… but by the time we reached Wasdale it was sunny. The photographs say it all. Four of the others swam to the other side and back, supported by Mark with his kayak; the other Mark and Tim got the picnic ready; Penny and Laura swam to the middle and back; and I went up to some rocks and back. I’d already been out that morning to an event that gave me a large lunch; I then ate far too much at Wastfest and ended up feeling quite uncomfortable. But it was another brilliant evening, and one which will no doubt be remembered for a while. The one slightly sad thing was that we couldn’t swim around the island – the water levels were too low and it was no longer an island but joined to the mainland!
The colours and light were amazing: this photo is now my wallpaper on my phone. Definitely something to do again next year!
runningin3time 