Throughout time, rivers have had a special spiritual significance, explored over the centuries in poetry, myth and through religion. Some years ago, during a period of great personal stress, I had a powerful dream, one which, at the time, I didn’t really understand: I was standing deep in the waters of the Ganges with many other people whom I didn’t know, and could sense the river’s healing power and the feeling of peace it brought to my troubled spirit. This dream appeared to have come from no source I could identify, but I remember that on waking I felt much stronger. I learned from later research that followers of the Hindu religion believe that immersion in the Ganges will cleanse away sins and heal those who have bathed in its waters.
In this present time of ‘Health and Safety’ rules and the standardisation of almost every pleasure, it’s one of the joys of living in Britain that it is still possible to bathe, free of charge, in streams, ponds and rivers, and along most of our coastline. And people do so, in their thousands. I remember visiting Tynemouth beach one summer when the coast was shrouded in a heavy sea mist that had continued all week. To my astonishment the beach was, nevertheless, packed with people.
Undeterred, the hardy British public behaved as if the weather was glorious, making occasional dashes for the sea from behind protective wind breaks, before scuttling for cover again to eat sandy sandwiches and drink steaming tea from flasks.
As a child I taught myself to swim alone, one rainy afternoon, in the icy waters of a river that tumbled through a Scottish glen. I was eight years old and had given my parents the slip. I returned to my favourite pool determined to get to grips with the problem of staying afloat. To this day I can recall the intensity of my battle with the elements as, with wild splashing and much swallowing of water, I struggled to keep my nose from being submerged. Then, all at once, there was a lull in the storm, wind and rain abated, and the sun shone from behind a cloud as the waters lifted me to the river bank. It was all so simple. I had learned to swim. Since that time, whenever I could, I have immersed myself in natural waters – in jungle streams and Scottish burns, in the Indian Ocean following the path of the setting sun, most often shivering in the North Sea, or basking in the Mediterranean and floating belly up in the gentle Aegean.
Now I consider myself supremely fortunate to live close to one of the most idyllic places in London, the swimming ponds of Hampstead Heath. It’s surely one of the wonders of the 21st century that it is still possible to swim, in peace, in the heart of the Capital, surrounded by trees, accompanied by waterfowl, and, if you’re lucky, with an occasional glimpse of a kingfisher. According to my copy of Old and New London, published in the 19th Century, the waters of the tributary of the river Fleet, which feeds the ponds, are ‘of a chalybeate nature’ and, ‘the mineral properties of this streamlet are of a ferruginous nature, its medicinal virtues are of a tonic character and are said to be efficacious in cases of nervous debility.’ In other words, swimming in the ponds is not only fun and life enhancing, but swallowing the waters won’t harm you and might even be good for the health!
The Hampstead Heath Ponds consist of a Mixed Bathing Pond, the Men’s Pond and the quaintly named Ladies’ Pond. At present they are at the centre of a heated debate, over what has traditionally been a free right for the public to swim there. This ‘People’s Right’ is increasingly subjected to the regulations and finances of the City of London, under whose control Hampstead Heath now lies. Last year a group of regular swimmers at the Ladies’ Pond made a lyrical film, City Swimmers, which beautifully captures the tranquillity of the Ponds through the changing seasons and goes on to outline the struggles in this and other parts of the country to keep, free and unrestricted, the historic and inalienable public right to swim in natural waters.
City Swimmers is available on DVD from moviemailonline.co.uk (0870 264 9000) at £9.99.
Waterlog by Roger Deakin, who died recently, is currently reprinting.This delightful book, a ‘frog’s eye view of the country’, has been described as ‘a defence of the wild water that is left and an elegy for that which has gone.’ Cicely Herbert is one of the trio who founded and continue to run Poems on the Underground.Her poetry collection In Hospital, together with theVictorian poetW.E.Henley, was published by Katabasis in 1992.
City Swimmers is available on DVD from moviemailonline.co.uk (0870 264 9000) at £9.99. Waterlog by Roger Deakin, who died recently, is currently reprinting.