Watch Wild Swimming

Fear not, tales of The Urban Swimmer's demise have been greatly exaggerated. He has been swimming, but hasn't got around to writing it up yet.

He posts this simply because while flicking around the telly the other night he was lucky enough to catch a reshowing of Wild Swimming, the BBC documentary about Roger Deakin's seminal book Waterlog. TUS's UK readers can watch it free on the BBC iplayer here. To be honest it's more of reflection on the popularity of what has become termed Wild Swimming but it's interesting enough. Move fast because it's only available for another day or so.

Even better, read the book, for although The Urban Swimmer takes his name from the John Cheever short story, the spiritual origins of this blog must come from Waterlog.

The only way is Essex

Is Upminster London? Technically speaking we are firmly in the county of Essex, a Romford postcode and er well, the countryside; on the other hand we are at the very last stop eastern stop of  the District Line of the London Underground. The Urban Swimmer says yes it is, and moreover, his blog his rules...

 

A week Saturday TUS took part in the excellent Orion 15, a 15 mile cross country run across Epping Forest, and last Sunday he ran in the Reading Half Marathon. Consequently all this running has rather disrupted his pool schedule. A good time then to recall one of last summer's visits to this far east of London's pools: gateway to the exotic East, Upminster. Better still because the pool in question is not a public pool and thus to TUS, all the more appealing for it's inaccessibility.

The pool in question is that of The Coopers' Company and Coborn School, a secondary school and sixth form. How does one get access to this facility without breaking windows, trespassing and incurring a restraining order from being a suspected kiddie fiddler? One must enter the Havering '90 Joggers annual Aquathlon. For the uninitiated, that's a swimming and running race. The Joggers event takes place in August, and since the swim is 400m and the race is 5k, even beginners should make it round without too much pain. TUS rather likes the format of the Aquathlon, and can't really understand why so many distance runners/swimmers end up as triathletes. Has it not occurred to people that using a two wheeled vehicle is basically cheating, and not that far removed from turning up at an Olympic 100m final on a moped. Maybe just me then...

Nothing quite like the pleasure of watching other people exercise when you've finished.

The pool itself reminded TUS of his own school days. Not that his school had a swanky pool like this, but secondary schools have a sort of universal feel. All those wood floored gyms, walls covered in students art and officious looking school notices, a slightly damp odor. Anyway the pool is 25m, and if you take part in the event you'll swim in four lanes, keeping to one side of a lane you share with another swimmer usually a length ahead. That can lead to an occasional banging of arms but TUS unharmed rather than unarmed.

Anyway it's a pleasant little local event with the air of summer sports day and TUS thoroughly enjoyed himself. If your interested check out the joggers website, though at time of writing, the 2012 event had yet to be announced.

Definitely Maybe

The Urban Swimmer at the Oasis...

TUS isn't much one for lunchtime exercise. Lunch he feels should be well,..for eating lunch and generally putting ones feet up. However the weather last week was positively spring-like, and the sight of sunglass doffing Londoners filling the West End made TUS long for the pool.

Where better then to visit for a sneaky lunch time swim than The Oasis Sports Centre? Hidden at the wrong end of Shaftesbury Avenue and round the back of Covent Garden and Seven Dials the centre looks pretty inoccuous from the outside. Its entrance is slightly raised from the main thoroughfare, you have probably walked past the place without realising that there was a sports centre there, let alone two whopping pools. Joy of joys is that out the back you will find the above little gem of a pool. An open-air heated pool, in the middle of the city, who would have believed such a thing possible? TUS has been visiting this pool for a good many years, and the truth is that he has probably become a little jaded about it. The place can become horrifically busy during commuter hours: TUS has sometimes had to wait 20 minutes for people to get out of the pool before they let you go in. Plus the staff there are the usual sport centre mix of customer service incompetents. But for all that, TUS still remembers when he first stumbled into the place and discovered the pure pleasure of swimming outdoors in warm water in all weathers. It's a giant bathtub fantasy, and although TUS has never taken his rubber ducky, he feels like it wouldn't be entirely out of place. It's a 27.5m length pool, usually divided into three wide lanes as above and it gets nice and deep about half way down. There is also a 25m indoor pool next to this one, but honestly why would you want to use that except to perhaps escape the busyness of the first pool?

Even though it was March it didn't seem to discourage a few early afternoon sunworshipers who chose to sit on the benches and roof overlooking this suntrap in a post swim haze while drying off a little. An Oasis indeed...well, on a good day.