This was another week this summer when yet another period of intense heat descended on us. In the middle of a county which is not famed for its coastline, small pockets of human activity appear beside the slow lowland rivers that meander across the levels to the Bristol Channel. People must have been swimming in the rivers here for centuries. There are various places, known about through word of mouth, that are well known swimming haunts. Trees with horizontal branches smoothed by generations of boys’ bare feet where lads have stood before leaping into weir pools or old stone bridges where the boys line up, their faces all pointing down, and dare themselves to be the first to jump into the cool green water below. In the heat these places are like a gift from God.
Yesterday at Shepton Mallet Lido they were turning people away and had already had 160 bookings for the day when they refused me entry. Many of the rivers nearby will have a spot often hidden away near a church or a bridge which has all the mise-en-scene of the beach: young and old in shorts and bikinis, kayaks and stand-up-paddleboards dumped on the grass, rubber rings and orange armbands, towels and picnic rugs spread about, small barbecues smoking or blackened squares of grass a reminder of an alfresco meal, eaten by a different family, on a different day.
A few years ago, the council made an inspired decision – to transform a seven and a half mile stretch of the Parrett by making it navigable and encouraging people to use it for recreation. Four pontoons were installed along the river, three in Langport and one a couple of miles upstream at Muchelney Bridge to create river access. They weren’t officially opened until October 2020, a good bit of timing as we were still under Covid restrictions at the time. It’s amazing how this recent addition has transformed the river where something like 250,000 people now visit the Upper Parrett every year. A local counsellor said recently how Langport had “developed a new sense of civic pride”.
When I’m here during the summer I swim in the river at least once a day and, when it’s warm, I am one of a whole host of people who have travelled mostly it seems from within Somerset to paddle, kayak or swim. It’s strange how many people I’ve met and how I’ve never seen the same people twice. The other day I met a young man with long hair who’d cycled from Pitney who said he comes here regularly. The following day an enormous man with tattoos was showing his son how to pole fish for perch (his son was in a wheelchair having broken his leg on a school trip). When I told him I might disturb the fish when I’d be hurling myself in not far from the boy’s float the father said:
“It’s all right, it’s everyone’s river.”
Mostly people look after the spot. Sometimes I’ve picked up a scrumpled fag packet. Another time someone left a screwed up pair of trunks and a pink water bottle. When they were still there a week later I took them to the local tip at Somerton. People come and go but the next day there is little to tell people were here apart from the muddy remants of sliding feet on the ramp to the pontoon.
For several years there were eight car tyres someone had thrown into the river under the bridge (sadly, flytipping has become a frequent occurrence in this part of South Somerset where many a time I have passed old bedsteads, mattresses, piles of rubble or pots of paint growing alongside the cow parsley out of the verge of a lane). Last week the same tyres had been retrieved from the river and piled up on the bank. The day after that someone else had moved them next to the gate onto the road. Only a few days after that they had gone and only one had been left on the grass, ideal for sitting on to put my socks and shoes back on.
Back at the cottage the garden had been baked hard by the intense heat: what was once a lawn is now a dust rectangle. The rose I was given as a leaving present when I quit my teaching job three summers ago has lost its leaves and perhaps won’t come back. I sweltered some more and then decided it was time for another dip.
The three retirees in a boat I had seen this morning were gone. There was a man in his sixties with a trilby on walking up from the pontoon while 2 boys and 2 girls who were all about 7 or 8, dressed in bright orange life jackets chatted in the high pitched, high energy way that is unique to children before they’re about to jump in some water: that intoxicating mix of fear and excitement.
Next to the ramp down to the pontoon three teenage girls in bikinis lay in a row, legs pulled up, sunglasses on and devices in their hands, engaged in energetic chatting and speed swiping on their phones at the same time.
It was a scene taken from a poolside somewhere and transported to a cow field in Somerset.
There had been a strong wind the last few days blowing from the north which had gathered reeds loosened from the bed of the river and the multiple tiny round green leaves of duckweed. Sometimes it feels a bit like diving into a big bowl of pea soup but after a couple of strong strokes I was pulling down the river with Langport Church always ahead of me to the north.
Herds of cows were on both banks of the river as they always are in summer. They often walk up the banks and then gather by the road and start their mooing as they reach the gate. They are young Fresians, almost fully grown, sporting the big splashes of black and white that make their breed so recognisable. A man in a canoe with a young child in another orange life jacket was rowing backwards towards me, his eyes focused on something ahead of me. We said hello to each other, me just a head in the water looking up at him.
“I think there is a calf that’s in trouble up there.”
Sure enough, on the left bank three or four cows were inquisitively dipping their noses down to something at the water’s edge. A young heifer struggled up onto the bank and stopped as it tried to get its back legs to follow in the way old dogs struggle to get into the back seat of a car. It paused a second before its whole body slipped back into the water and it lay there, its head turned upwards showing the whites of its eyes.
The cows continued to fuss about it while I wondered what to do. I don’t know who the farmer is here but if I call Marie she’ll know and get them down here.
I had a half crazed idea to swim towards it and perhaps frighten it into climbing the bank. After I made a couple more breast strokes, it suddenly turned its body and started swimming straight for me in the same way horses swim, chin resting on the surface breathing through its nose. I’ve never seen a swimming cow before. I imagined its body underwater and its hooves pumping and I’m reminded of a time I went swimming with a girl from Cornwall and her three border collies in the Helford Estuary. It all seemed idyllic until I got too close to one of the dogs and it scratched me hard down my chest as it paddled for the shore. I didn’t want to think what a fully grown cow might do while swimming for its life.
Its eyes were wide as it came surprisingly quickly down the river, creating a bow wave ahead of it, the nostrils dilating as its breath came out, deep and loud. I was still thinking which direction to swim in to avoid it when it suddenly turned and headed straight across the river, paused momentarily at the water’s edge and with an enormous effort heaved its dripping backside up onto the bank, paused another two seconds and then scrambled up the last part of the bank, lost its footing and then finally stumbled onto the top where it stood stock still – probably in shock – then made a long low moo as if to itself and started to lick its haunches. A minute later another cow came up and did that thing where they touched noses and I wondered if this was some bovine way of comforting one another.
The whole episode must have taken less than thirty seconds. While still treading water, I turned round to look back towards the bridge and 4 bright orange blobs were now in the water and bearing down on me while excited screams and chatter travelled over the water. The canoeist had picked up the man with the trilby and the three girls were still on their backs, bronzing and chatting, clearly oblivious to swimming cows and children.
And Somerset continued to swoon in the heat.
The Slow Walker 