Wild swimming with a backpack? Welcome to cross country swimming & More News Here

The public footpath lay barely 20 metres from the place I stood, promising a stroll alongside the river, passing fields and thru woodland, nicely away from any street. Yet there was one thing in my means blocking entry to it. The very river it meanders alongside – the Thames – flowed between me and this legally designated proper of means.

I checked my Ordnance Survey map of this a part of Berkshire to see how to attain the trail, however there was no different footpath that will legally lead me to the island on which it sat (a bridge I noticed was not a proper of means, with a closed gate). This was a permitted pathway that nobody might really entry, until that they had a boat.

It was this path that got here to thoughts when, a few weeks later, I heard about a new exercise rising in recognition throughout Britain, one that mixes water and strolling: cross-country swimming. This is when hikers and walkers carry a specifically designed, massive however light-weight waterproof tow-float and a dry bag. So if you attain a watery impediment you’ll be able to merely take out your cossie (or extra probably wetsuit) and swim it.

This exercise was born out of lockdown, when swimming pools had been closed and other people’s actions had been restricted. It is the brainchild of two brothers, Will and Tom Watt, the latter of whom I met at Grantchester Meadows in Cambridge to be proven the strokes, alongside with a small group of different curious water lovers.

“We spent a lot of time in the Lakes growing up,” Tom stated as we ambled alongside surrounded by the thrill of grasshoppers, the flutter of butterflies and the chirp of birdsong, whereas the River Cam babbled fortunately by. “There you’d come off a hill and want to climb one on the other side of the valley but a body of water was in the way. It would be an eight-mile walk to get around it or,” he stated with a smile, “a mile-long swim. It was then we came up with the idea.”

The Watts spent a while trialling a number of package to discover out what might make this exercise potential, together with present flotation aids and dry baggage, however discovered nothing that would adequately incorporate all the things wanted. For a whereas they centered as an alternative on occasions: they created the Swimmer, a central London half marathon that takes within the metropolis’s ponds, swimming pools and parks. But 2020 gave them the chance to work on the proper cross-country swimming pack and launch it with a retreat in Devon, which they promoted as “epic adventures over land and water”. It all sounded enjoyable in a Type 2 means (depressing whereas it’s occurring however pleasurable on reflection), however what about those that are after much less endurance and extra enjoyment?

That’s the place this route is available in. It’s a comparatively simple half-day journey that Tom’s firm, Above Below, runs all through the summer season to fulfill the demand from much less hardcore swimmers. Beginning at Cambridge railway station, it meanders alongside the Cam for 5km to the Orchard tea room, the place the likes of Virginia Woolf and Rupert Brooke wrote – and took dips. We can be doing the identical (minus the writing for many, though not for me), finishing a great moist and dry circuit by swimming again with the present within the Cam.

As wild swimming turns into extra fashionable (it predictably skilled a growth when restrictions had been utilized to gyms and swimming pools), it started to run up towards obstacles, and this stretch of the Cam is a working example. Earlier in the summertime King’s College, which owns the land, tried to ban the exercise right here – regardless that it has been loved at Grantchester Meadows for no less than 5 centuries – citing unruly behaviour and littering. Protesters have fought the ruling and, for now, the observe remains to be being loved whereas discussions happen between swimmers, council and faculty.

The scent of freshly baked scones and brewing tea blended with the notes of elderflower and freshly lower grass as we reached the cafe. After chatting about a few of Tom’s watery adventures (together with a crossing of the Lakes, the Broads and the islands of Scotland) we walked to the sting of the river and turned into our wetsuits. It was then that Tom revealed his essential invention – the RuckRaft.

This is a machine a bit like a massive inflatable horseshoe, with the raft made out of a toughened materials meaning even when holding towels, consuming water, dry garments and snacks (something up to 15kg) within the connected dry bag, it nonetheless glides on the floor of the water effortlessly.

As I plunged into the river, its coolness welcome within the humidity of an August day, the load of my provides dissipated. My again was free, and I merely pulled all the things I wanted behind me, feeling nearly weightless.

I relaxed into the water, my hair flowing round my face as I slowly floated alongside dragonflies, a moorhen and her chicks, and a curious gray heron – none of which appeared to even acknowledge my presence.

The entire expertise drifted by all too shortly and very quickly I used to be drying off and strolling again to the station feeling buoyed. Though cross-country swimming was invented to present a problem, I believed it had given me one thing far more essential – the arrogance to strive it on my own.

So I made a decision to return to my inaccessible island, the footpath by the Thames. I headed to the Ferry Pub at Cookham with my new little bit of package (I couldn’t resist investing in a RuckRaft), alongside with a backpack stuffed with dry garments, a tenting range and picnic, head buzzing with pleasure. I used to be about to attain that floating footpath.

I plunged into the waterway and swam throughout to the eyot, exploring its banks for a whereas. After 5 minutes of looking out, the island relented: I discovered my entrance level alongside a tree and hoisted myself out.

A fast dry down and alter of footwear later – from neoprene boots to sandals – and strapping my RuckRaft to my still-dry backpack, I lastly trod this path. Blackberries festooned the hedges and I foraged hungrily alongside robins, sparrows and wagtails. At first the footpath was overgrown however, as I neared the lock, it turned a joyous straight line edged by crowdless fields and overarched by timber. Until, as merely because it had begun, it ended on the water’s edge as soon as extra.

I modified once more and swam farther down the river, taking within the part that runs alongside Cliveden en route to Maidenhead. It was as lovely because it was when Jerome Okay Jerome paddled it in Three Men and a Boat – “In its unbroken loveliness this is, perhaps, the sweetest stretch of all the river,” he wrote – lined now, because it was then, with the chalk hills of the Chilterns, and canopied with oak, sycamore and beech. Red kites glided above me as I backstroked so I might search for on the woods.

Halfway down I took a break on an island and made tea, courtesy of my tenting range, in a place I wouldn’t have been in a position to attain had I been strolling solely. Then it was again within the water till, simply earlier than reaching Maidenhead, I hauled out, dried off and walked the Thames Path again to the beginning, my smile nearly as vast because the river I used to be strolling alongside.

“The idea,” Tom had defined to me again in Cambridge, “is that people will use the RuckRaft and the idea of cross-country swimming to forge their own routes and share them with others. To enjoy water as part of their day rather than worry about it causing an unnecessary diversion. And to open up more of the countryside to walkers and swimmers.”

Certainly, each in Cambridge and in Berkshire, my newfound talent had given me the prospect to just do that. Though the Thames loop wasn’t that lengthy a stroll, and the swim not too difficult, it represented greater than that – the prospect to pioneer a new route by no means open to me earlier than, the chance to attain a picnic spot that in any other case would have been off-limits and, when it got here to that footpath, the flexibility to entry the beforehand inaccessible.

Above Below runs cross-country swimming occasions, retreats and day experiences. Upcoming three-day retreats in Devon (July and September, from £324) and Ullswater (September, from £328), embrace lodging, meals, instruction and native transport

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