Back at the cottage after a fantastic two days in Snowdonia as a belated 50th birthday present.
Perhaps in a cliche of other middle aged men around the world focusing on their health I have become a ‘hoffer’, a follower of Wim Hof and his breathing method and crazy cold water treatments.
I’ve always been into swimming but last week there I was suddenly launching myself into glacial Welsh lakes and sitting there surrounded by forests and mountains looking like I was watching the news.
It might sound bonkers but, God, does it feel good.
Thus on my return to Somerset yesterday on one of those dark, dank evenings that remind us what English wintertime is capable of I left C watching Paddington 2 and set off in shorts and flip flops to go to my summer swimming spot at Muchelney.
Parking at the bridge something seemed amiss.
Under the bridge there were the wooden posts that lead to the river pontoon that had been funded by EU money back in the day. Aside from the posts a muddy gash beside the river and then nothing but the grey water of the river.
A man with a beanie, a walking stick and a football team app on his phone told me they get taken out for the winter.
‘They come out at the end of october and then they put them back in May.’
‘Last year when the water rose it started to buckle the metal poles that hold the pontoon in place. The one at Langport is also out for the winter.’
It makes sense. Besides what fool would want to be using the river in winter anyway?
I’m now committed though so onwards to the slipway at Black Bridge in Langport.
There I found a few cars in the car park, a man fishing with an old fashioned reel and a white van at the top of the slipway. A young girl was sitting in the passenger seat.
The man at the back was tall with restless eye and demeanour. He was called Dave. He had bought a tiny rowing boat ‘after a few pints in the pub for £100’. He shows me in the back of his van. He also had bought an outboard for £45. His daughter probably aged about 8 has appeared beside us and is looking a bit pouty.
‘We almost sunk’, she tells me. And he says nothing. Was that half an eye roll behind his back as he explains his enthusiasm for his boat? I wonder if she learned that from her mum.
‘Are you going for a swim?’
‘Yep’.
So they watch me and we chat about young people who are causing a problem at the east end of Langport and he tells me his wife was at school I used to work in although I can’t remember her name and the daughter looks on amusedly now and asks the obvious question.
‘Is it cold?’
On the way back I start thinking about the myriad possibilities of cold water dipping in Somerset, a place which has always been smothered with water. A place where as Roger Deakin put it everywhere seems to have a watery name such as Frog Lane and Water Street. And I feel like Deakin as he starts getting into the idea of his watery mission (in ‘Waterlog’) to swim across the British Isles by poring over maps and looking at the abundance of water.
Well I could say the same for me as I start picking out potential spots close to me now the pontoons have been taken out. Oath Weir. The Sowy at Oath. Under the bridge at Langport. Pibsbury Weir. The Hambridge Mill stream (where my mum used to swim as a little girl). the River Isle at Hambridge. I have the same childlike excitement I used to have when I asked my grandfather for detailed maps of the Somerset moors when I was a child to plan my fishing jaunts.
Although now it is me who is the fish wanting to be immersed in the cold, ancient waters of The Levels.
The Slow Walker 