Yearning

The winter is a strange time for open water swimmers. More than many we feel the changing of the seasons.

There is nothing quite like an icy cold winter swim at the local lido to wake you up on a Sunday morning. It's wild and frenetic. It's crazy and nerve wracking and over in a flash. It's hilarious. In the winter a ten minute outdoor swim can leave you by turns buzzing and exhilerated; then cold to the bone and exhausted all day, lazing at home heavy-eyed clutching a hot water bottle, longing to sleep off the mild hypothermia.

But for all my love of the comic brutality of winter swimming, sometimes I find myself sitting in the house on a dark winter evening, watching the rain and the trees waving, snuggled up wrapped in slippers and jumpers wondering about that other life I had. Did I really swim in the sea for hours in summer? Was I warm and carefree? Did swimming outdoors seem like a welcome relief from the heat of the day? Did that really happen? Could I go on without the pain in my fingers and on the back of my neck? Was the water really warm enough?

And sometimes even at this time of year, the water at the lido reaches tantillisingly acceptable temperatures allowing more than 15 minutes of almost relaxed swimming. And we rejoice and swim for too long because we can, and get even more cold because we've lost judgement in our excitement. And then the warm spell to be quickly followed by yet another cold spell with clear nights that drive the water temperature back down to hard, painful realms again.

Almost every Sunday morning throughout the winter Gee and Cath and Camilla and I have met up giggling and nervous and excited at the Lido. Gee grins like a chesire cat. She loves each moment, laps it up. Cath studiously compares the lido water temperature to that of the Serpentine and the Ladies pond, where she swims more frequently. Camilla is new to cold water swimming this season and has really taken to it. After each swim she articulates for us her experience of swimming in the water - a reassuring echo of everything that we know to be true, and that those who are not cold water swimmers cannot possibly understand no matter how much you try to explain.

And now spring is on the way and the days inch longer and the water gets a little warmer each week. And we wait, like fidgety little children, for the time when we can go out to play again for longer than fifteen minutes.

The desire to be carefree and open and unrestricted is overwhelming.