When I was 13, my mother booked me onto a sailing course in Dorset, with a friend who’d been before. I wasn’t keen, but Mum assured me my friend had loved it, so I would too. It rained all week, and I spent most of my time capsizing my dinghy and missing home.
These days, many of my friends are hooked on wild swimming. Some even break the ice on winter mornings at Hampstead Heath’s Ladies’ Pond or Hyde Park’s Serpentine Lake. I’ve tried joining them, but disliked how pondweed, invisible in the murky water, coiled itself round my legs. And the way the cold settled into my bones for the entire day.
My friends might rave about wild swimming and its benefits, whose potency I don’t doubt. But I’ve found my – such as yoga, lifting weights, and walks through London parks.
