It is a cold morning at Derwent Water. Well, of course it is – time of year and all that. There’s a bite in the breeze, a lively chop on the lake. The ripples don’t, at first glance, look all that inviting.
Yet here they come, one after another, some already in their robes and towels, others in their normal clothes. There are greetings on the jetty at Ashness, and then we move to the side of the lake to talk.
I am here with a group of cold-water swimmers or ‘dippers’ who would not wish to be anywhere else on earth. Some have travelled from different parts of Cumbria. Others have ventured from different countries.
They are here to explain a shared love for plunging themselves into very cold water. They are here as part of a new book by the Cockermouth author Sara Barnes, to which they all contributed; to attend the Kendal Mountain Festival, where Sara is speaking; and to be together for the first time having bonded on social media.
They are also, let’s be clear about this, here most of all to get themselves into Derwent Water on this chilly day, as quickly as possible.
Immersion in cold water appears to be a growing passion. These people of varying ages and backgrounds, from Bath and Kendal, the USA and Canada, Norway and Belgium, are adamant that doing so is of great benefit to their lives, well-being and state of mind.
They got to know one another whilst corresponding with Barnes, a runner and cyclist who discovered the wonders of cold water when her mobility became limited by severe osteoarthritis and subsequent surgery. After finding the experience transformational at a difficult time in her life, she found a community of like-minded folk online, and wrote about them in The Cold Fix.
There are only a few ducks keeping us company beside Derwent Water, so the layman’s question has to come first. Isn’t this all…just a little mad?
“Oh, we are mad!” laughs Leelou Teasdale, 50, from Kendal. “It looks like a mad thing to everyone who hasn’t done it before. I used to think that. It’s that trepidation, and panic, and fear of not knowing what’s going on.
“But once you do it, something takes hold. It’s primal – and it becomes addictive. My body tells me I need to go back in if I haven’t done it for a while.”
Leelou, like her cold-dipping peers, says she has found the water to be a “fix” in both the sense of repair and addiction. “I’d had an accident, and my body was hurting,” she adds. “I was going to a hydrotherapy pool, but then [Covid] lockdown happened and we couldn’t go.
“My husband was an open-water swimmer in the past and suggested I get into Lake Windermere. I told him he was stupid. Eventually, he literally dragged me in there, and through it I met a group of people who were so welcoming.
“There was one time I was swimming late at night in the dark, something touched me and I panicked, but I remembered that my body is water, and this is water. It’s part of me. It became a natural thing. I can’t imagine not doing it now.”
Having read Sara’s book, I ask the group of people if going into the cold water is an “escape”. They politely disagree, and say that “reset” is better word. They are, after all, going eagerly towards something, for a purpose, rather than running away.
“It’s like a forced meditation, something that closes everything down – one sensation that takes all your attention,” says Johnnie Schmidt, 57, who has travelled from Litchfield, Minnesota, to experience Cumbria’s cold lakes.
“How did I start? A bunch of my friends had done a sauna and cold dip through ice that I cut a hole in. I had to go the next morning and pull the ladder out…and I just decided I was gonna go in myself. It was zero degrees. I was like, ‘Wow, this is really cool’. It wasn’t freaky or anything. Once that chemical cocktail hits you…it seems a little crazy, but once you feel it, you understand why.”
Johnnie says the cold water experience is a case of “bringing back to yourself”, offering mental clarity. He says that, in the recent past, he has changed career and altered his outlook on life. He associates these changes with how he has opened his mind to the cold fix.
Tara Kelsall, 49, from Bath, empathises. “It’s completely life-changing, totally transformational,” she says. “I would say I’ve become a happier person, more calm but also more playful,” she says.
Tara says she started cold-water swimming “because my husband was having a midlife crisis, got a wetsuit, went in a river and took me along with him to make sure he didn’t die…I looked and said, ‘Why is he in and not me?’
“What I find is that it closes everything down. You lose the anxiety and chatter, because you’re so focused in the water. It’s very calming and stilling, but also energising. I’ve really enjoyed that; because I’m perimenopausal, I’m finding it really helpful just to bring back a bit of joy, spark, fun.” She has also changed career recently, from working in childcare to becoming a life coach.
These people have all thought deeply about the way the initial discomfort of stepping into freezing water can be coped with to the point it quickly feels perfectly natural. It does feel that a certain open-mindedness is the first step, and that running into cold water again and dashing out screaming is not the way to gain from it.
Easier said than done? Not so, all contend, though Fien Leerman, 46, from the Belgian coast, discovered the sensation almost by chance.
“It started as a joke,” she says. “We drank too much beer, on the beach. And we went in. It was October. After that, we said we would go every two weeks and see if we managed. Everywhere we could find water, we would just go in. And I never stopped. Other people did but I didn’t.”
Fien says she was quickly keen to try colder water in more extreme settings. Like the others, she documents her cold-water adventures on Instagram. “In Belgium, it’s forbidden,” she smiles. “In lockdown, you couldn’t sit, play, eat on the beach. I was like, ‘Yes, I’m gonna go!’ I always go where there are kite surfers, because people don’t notice you as much.
“There was one time a kite surfer got a fine and had to go home. I was there in my water sandals, suit and bathing robe, in my car in the middle of winter. The policeman came up and was like, ‘What are you doing?’ We said we were swimming. He thought about it…and said, ‘Ok’. We took a picture with him!”
Fien says the cold water has multiple benefits. “Sometimes it shuts down the mind when I feel restless. Sometimes it helps give me a kick in the ****,” she says. “You need to know your own body and how far you can go. But you feel strong – like, ‘I’ve got this’.”
Derwent Water laps vigorously at the shore as Solveig Lohne Orum, 67, from Arendal in Norway, describes her own story. “For me it started in 2007. I was kind of depressed, lost my job and just felt so bad. I can’t remember exactly why I started swimming, but there was a place where I and my husband used to go to take pictures for a Christmas card. We used to bicycle home, and then…we just decided to get in, every week.
“Then Covid came, and I had so much troubles – I lost my mum, my dad was alone, I was sad every day, I had broken my hands, everything. Then one day I said to myself, ‘No more!’ I felt mad and angry. And decided to go to the water. I live five minutes from it – seaside, salty water, waves and joy every day.
“After two years, at the same place, I have met 120 new people. For me, being in the water is a kind of praise, to be thankful. I got baptised twice, and every time I go to the sea, I think about that. It’s a restart. That’s what baptism is – a new line, a new chapter.
“When you go in, you don’t think,‘it’s cold’. And after…I just feel so good. It’s like the old is gone, and when you get up, you’re new.”
Jason Bryan, 52, originally from Canada, is a neighbour of Solveig in Norway and, though he has lived near water all his life, was never a swimmer, let alone a cold-water enthusiast. “Both my personal and business life were quite stressful, and somehow on Instagram I saw people were swimming in cold water, and it seemed kind of interesting, from the context of, ‘I really don’t want to do that!’ It represented something to be afraid of.
“But I have two young kids, and when lockdown came to Norway, I realised this was going to be a defining period in their lives. On March 15, when the government essentially said, ‘stay in your house’, I got up in the morning with no plan and just said to the kids, who are six and nine now, ‘get your jackets, we’re going down to the dock’.
“I stripped down, and climbed down the bathing ladder. The kids were by the side, asking me what it was like, and I was telling them they could do this – it’s hard, but you don’t have to live your life in fear or be a victim. I thought, foolishly, that [lockdown] would be over in a few weeks. In the end, we kept going back, and in the summer I’d bring them all the time.
“I soon realised all the other benefits people talk about – the mental peace, the joy afterwards, the community, the euphoria. I started doing it for the kids but it’s also now a selfish thing in that it helps me be a better person, a calmer person, a happier person, a more relaxed person. Then I can turn around and be better for them, and for everyone else I meet.”
Jason says that, at some point this month, he will have dipped for a thousand days in a row. It is clear that most of these people will be in the cold water on Christmas Day “You are biochemically bringing joy into your life,” Jason adds.
I find it interesting that several of the people here turn their noses up at other suggested cold water experiences, such as a cold shower. “That’s way worse,” says Johnnie. “A thousand cold things hitting you at once, whereas getting in the water is one thing…and it’s immersion.”
Some of them take cold baths outside, others lower themselves into chest freezers full of icy water. Sara, 60, is among those who finds cold pools anywhere she can across Cumbria.
Her book, she says, does not dwell greatly on the scientific aspects of the cold fix. She has researched as much as is needed for safety purposes, but adds: “For me it is more spiritual, how I feel, how it’s unlocked a lot of creativity and layers.”
Tara adds: “It makes me think about yoga. We’ve known what it does to the body for 5,000 years, and in the last ten years science has gone, ‘Oh, yeah!’ Knowing more [about the science] may be reassuring to some people. For others it’s about how it makes you feel, without needing an external validator.”
Johnnie: “People are often looking for a quick fix, a mechanical something. But I can tell you exactly what happens to me – I go in feel calm, and totally connected to something else, ancestrally or whatever.”
Has there ever been a serious risk attached to these freezing ventures? “I had one last year,” Johnnie adds. “I cut a hole in ice, and got stuck. It gets scary really fast. But I learned. The lake was talking to me, saying, ‘Remember what this is about – I can kill you as well as fix you’.”
Sara wrote her book to share the idea of cold water as a giver of strength. “It did repair me: physically, emotionally, everything,” she says, explaining how it turned her life and mind on a positive course after her injuries and the loss of her mum.
A broadness of mind appears vital here. In Sara’s case it also relies on the hypnotherapy identities of Mother, Warrior, Child, Panther and Thinker when contemplating the various impressions and feelings of the cold fix. Crucially, she also stresses in the book, she has never felt the urge to “battle” the coldness – and that is plain when she and the others finally break away from our interview to get changed and head for the lake.
They walk into Derwent Water, stay there for a while, then take turns to jump back in from the jetty. They talk, swim, pose for photos, linger and laugh. The temperature is low, the wind still sharp, but one thing appears crystal clear: how joyfully happy they all are.
* The Cold Fix by Sara Barnes is published by Vertebrate Publishing, priced £14.95. It is available to buy on Amazon HERE or direct from the publisher HERE
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