LXVSWIM

“First of May! First of May, Outdoor ****ing starts today”. Rumpole of the Bailey, a fictional lawyer, a character in every sense of the...

I woke up this morning with the number 888 in my head. On Sunday 19th April, Pauline woke me with a cup of tea and “888”. I like numbers,...

If I were writing a letter to my beloved outdoor swimming, it might start ‘My dear Port Meadow…’. It would be written long-hand, with...

Today, work continues in a stutter-state of conference calls, Zoom, Skype, Teams, Hang Out, the local-to-Oxford platforms; I never...

This is a new world, somehow surreal and strange, new yet not new to the world. Surreal. With surrealism, dream-like states allow fish to...

The loneliness of the social-distanced swimmer. I miss you all, and it’s only been a week or so. Pauline and I are nostalgic about the...

I was to have been in Italy this week, at the Slow Food Foundation. I have work there two sometimes three times a year. It is always...

South London Swimming Club are framed as the opposition by the Serpentine Swimming Club, at least when it comes to the annual races...

La Banchina isn’t Italian, it is firmly Copenhagen in a cockle-shell. It is a café in a run-down shed on the canal front in a brown field...

Approaching this place of calm and swimming from the very centre of Helsinki seemed straightforward, until Pauline and I encountered...

This Winter has been disappointing, at least in the sense of not being cold enough. I had been looking forward to breaking ice on the...

One great thing about Kastrup Sea Bath, or The Snail, or the Conch, is that it is easy to get to. Two stops from the airport on the...

“Ser-pen-ti- ine, my Serpenti-ine, Ser-pen-ti- ine, my Serpenti-ine”… A musical fruit-loop from the Serpentine Swimming Club Christmas...

Jeremy and I drove (well, Jeremy drove) from Bled on day two of the Winter Swimming World Championships to Bohinj, just under an hour...

Very exciting to be able to attend and swim at the premier gathering of winter swimmers at Lake Bled, Slovenia. The king and queen of...

PHISH time – the now almost-annual event of the winter swimming brother-and-sister-hood of the cold water. We arrived in London in good...

The day started with two auspicious moments. The first was seeing the sun rising from the infinite mist on the horizon of the M40 on the...

Past ‘Nauty but Ice’ – an ice-cream parlour on the harbour-front, past ‘Rick Stein’ – an expensive sea-food restaurant on the other side...

St Ives had/has a significant artists’ presence, if not colony any more. The names that have lived here is far surpassed by the names...

I was swept away by the incoming tide of Susie and Philip’s kindness and warm hospitality in Cornwall. Susie invited me to swim some of...