UK’s best wild swimming spots, from Hampstead Heath to the Isles of Scilly | The Independent

Standing hunched in the frame of the millhouse’s first floor window, vertigo swirling as the River Avon glints below me in the midsummer sun, I realise my love of wild swimming is now an all-consuming passion.

I was 15 feet up, staring down at one of England’s finest rivers, with a group of fellow swimmers egging me on to jump – and I was actually considering it. I counted to three, closed my eyes, flung myself from the window. The split seconds between jumping and crashing feet-first into the green water felt like an eternity. But as I surfaced I found that familiar feeling – that rush of dopamine, endorphins zipping around my brain. I was exhilarated but calm.

I was nine months into a personal mission which had led me to this exhilarating yet mad experience. The challenge? To try wild swimming in every river, lake, lido, bay and canal visited by the late naturalist and adventurer Roger Deakin in his 1999 cult classic, Waterlog.

Wild swimming essentially means swimming outdoors. You can do it in the sea, in a lake, a river – even a canal if it takes your fancy. But that’s not to say you can swim everywhere. Many stretches of water are private; some are dangerous. Gravel pit lakes, for example, can often be hazardous, with sharp drops in depth meaning the temperature falls rapidly. But finding the perfect wild swimming spot is a hugely rewarding experience.

My own love affair with wild swimming started one heady summer, during which I spent my days swimming in the mixed pond at Hampstead Heath. Having first gone to Hampstead as a heads-out breast-stroker who preferred the strictures of the indoor pool, I soon found myself steeped in its waters. And for one very good reason. When I pushed myself off from the concrete jetty, buoyed up by its depths, I felt an almost instant cure for the anxiety that had been nagging at my brain for years.

Swimming, particularly wild swimming, held a simple appeal. Whenever I got in the water, I felt calmer, more present. This was mindfulness. My only focus was kicking my legs and moving my arms, making sure I survived in that moment.

I began craving different water, different places. And in Deakin I found my guide. Having fallen in love with his anti-authoritarian spirit and bucolic descriptions of the English countryside, Waterlog became my bible – and I followed its path religiously.