My summer of wild swimming has been infinitely improved by the accompaniment of Roger Deakin’s classic book ‘Waterlog’.
Subtitled, ‘A Swimmer’s Journey Through Britain’, this is a book that invites a glimpse of a better life. It is a book that reminds us of endless possibilities – a book of questing, starting from a literal quest – to swim the rivers, ponds, lidos and seas of England. Rather like wild swimming itself, immersion in Deakin’s beautiful, crisp and poetic prose is so enlivening, so refreshing.
Dive in!
The book begins with an epigraph from Loudon Wainwright’s ‘The Swimming Song’. Here is the song, charmingly performed by ‘Harbour Ukuleles’ with shots of the famous wild swimming site at Sandycove, Dublin (mentioned in James Joyce’s Ulysses, no less):
