4 ideas
In a summer rainstorm, Roger Deakin was swimming breaststroke in the spring-fed moat at Walnut Tree Farm, his home in Mellis, Suffolk. The idea came to him of swimming across Britain, borrowed from John Cheever's story 'The Swimmer', in which a man swims home through his neighbours' pools. Over the following period he swam rivers, tarns, lidos, fens, sea caves and tidal waters from Cornwall to Jura, and kept a logbook that became the book.
A swimmer's eyes sit at the waterline, so the swimmer looks out from inside the habitat rather than down on it from a bank or a path. From that level the observer becomes a participant sharing the element with otters, dragonflies and fish. Familiar country turns strange, and details that walkers never notice come into view.
In England and Wales, riparian landowners and fishing interests control most inland water, and only a small fraction of rivers carry a clear public right of access. 'Private Fishing' signs therefore work like enclosure fences, quietly turning an old common practice into trespass. Deakin argues that swimming in wild water should be treated as a right to roam, like walking, because water is a commons that ownership has captured.
Outdoor swimming was once ordinary, but liability fears, hygiene anxieties and 'No Swimming' signage have driven it out. Lidos have closed, and bathing places have been fenced off or chlorinated into sterile indoor pools. The result is not safer people but people cut off from wild water and unfamiliar with it, which makes the water seem more dangerous still.