Call of the sea

I’M standing up to my knees in icy cold water. It’s not just chilly, it actually hurts, but I’m in my bathers, I’m at Bordeaux and bugger it, I’m going in.

Like many islanders, I was inspired by the beautiful Easter weather to take my first dip of the year. It certainly wasn’t a long swim, really just more of a dunking, and I certainly wouldn’t call it pleasurable. But my body was submerged, my arms and legs were moving (flailing) and hopefully by the time this column goes to print I should have regained some feeling in my nether regions. Thus I’m feeling pretty smug with myself. It was my earliest April swim to date and if there were a badge that says ‘I froze my assets today’ then I would wear it with pride.

Cold water I have mastered. Seaweed – now that’s a whole other ball game. I just cannot bring myself to swim over a patch of seaweed. Or rocks. And if my foot touches something unidentified while I’m wading out you can be sure there will be yelps and squeals and much arm waving hysteria. I may be in the water, but I clearly have a long way to go.

Hence my favourite swimming spots are those with a clear stretch of sand where I can splash around safe in the knowledge that some hideous sea creature is not going to lunge at me from a patch of seaweed covered rock. That hideous sea creature may be something as benign as a teeny tiny crab, but that doesn’t stop me being disproportionately wussy about it. It’s the aquatic equivalent of being scared of spiders. It doesn’t matter how many times I tell myself the spider is more scared of me than I am of it, I still don’t want to touch one or have one near me. Although those smaller than a ping pong ball I can now catch in a glass, there is still much pumping of adrenaline and a large dose of the heebie-jeebies (me, not the spider).

Back to the beach and to be honest, it’s a miracle I ever set foot on the sand as I once saw a ragworm in the biology lab at school and it still gives me nightmares. That aside, a stretch of beautiful golden sand covered by clear water is my swimming place of choice, preferably at high tide as I can’t be bothered to walk too far. Chouet, Vazon or Petit Port (except for the steps) rate high in my favourite places to go for a bob. My nearest beach is Pembroke, which would be perfect were it not for the sometimes questionable water quality and the fact it is facing the wrong way (no sunsets). Other favourites include Belvoir and Shell Beach on Herm, which despite always feeling incredibly chilly water-wise are simply some of the most beautiful spots in the Channel Islands as far as I am concerned. Last year I was persuaded to swim out into Fermain Bay from the mooring steps, which was just about the bravest thing I’ve done in the water since attempting an Eskimo roll in a canoe on an Outward Bound sometime in the late eighties. Aside from being permanently terrified of being in the deep water and/or ingesting a mouthful of untreated sewage it was absolutely brilliant. And were it not for the sea temperature reminding me I was still in the British Isles (probably a modest 17 degrees at that time) I could have imagined myself anywhere in the warm and glorious Mediterranean. Incidentally, I did once do a Shirley Valentine in the Med – jumping naked from a sailing boat into the crystal clear waters of a Greek island. It was utterly liberating, and for a few blissful minutes I floated there completely at one with nature, unimpeded by clothes or the rules of polite society. I could have stayed in longer, but the brilliant light reflecting off my insanely white boobs was burning my retinas.

The sea temperature this weekend was around 10 degrees. So after staying in just long enough to see if the pain eased off (it didn’t) I made my way back to the shore to warm up in the brilliant Easter sunshine. From the Bordeaux slipway Herm looks so tantalisingly close. I think to myself that I could probably swim that far were it not for the tides, the depth, the seaweed, the rocks, the scary sea creatures and it being a major shipping lane. Back home Google Maps tells me it’s more than two miles from Bordeaux to the north end of Herm. Seeing as I can just about manage a single kilometre in the pool at St Sampson’s High during my ‘learn to swim better’ classes I reconsider this point. Instead I watch in awe as my friends track their own sea swimming adventures via Facebook. From those, like me, who daintily dip when the sun comes out, to those who proper pound through the waves, goggles on, face-in-the-water fearless at any time of year. Whatever our aim or our ability level, we all have one thing in common, a love of sea swimming and a massive sense of gratitude to be able to live somewhere that makes this possible.