LIVE LIFE WELL
Wild swimming is a great way to get back to nature
MY COUNTRY PASSION
Winter sea swimming
FEATURE JACKY PARKER PHOTOGRAPHS TIM GAINEY/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
While swimming in the icy seas of the Scottish Isles, Tamsin Calidas discovered she had untapped inner reserves of strength, courage and resilience I live in the Scottish Hebrides. The landscape is wild with rugged cliffs, mountains and fierce tides as well as an intimacy of view, with rolling hills, freshwater lochs, tiny, white sand coves and native woodlands. I love the unpredictability of the weather, the light and the incredible wildlife – when you commit to this, daily, it offers itself differently. Swimming in the winter is the year’s highlight. The experience of water, its contrasts, familiarity and discomforts, intensifies. I suddenly step more closely into my own life. I love the sea’s teeth. Even in summer the water is testing; it bites and reminds you that you are you. The water in summer ranges from 8-11 degrees and this drops to 6 degrees in winter, with an icy wind chill that can drop to minus 15 degrees. That intensity of experience
is exhilarating and addictive; it takes you into a wilder, instinctive zone. I needed to make sense of some very intense and challenging times I had experienced. It’s a longer story, but one day I felt called to the shore. On the rocks, there was nowhere to hide, no shelter or buffer. That day, my heart lifted as the sea reached forwards, gently calling me. It brought me back, from a place of darkness and into a pivotal moment. Stepping into the cold water is akin to shedding a skin. There’s a moment when I stand on the shore, the fierce waves barrelling towards me, that I have to commit. It helps me to focus, to recalibrate and take myself into a space where my resilience is infinitely greater than I imagined. It gifts courage, endurance and strength. As I return to the shore, I feel braver than I did before. After my daily
swim, anything else that happens in my life feels, if not easy, then at least possible. It tests your limits, stretches tolerances and slackens and strengthens a core fibre that quivers through your whole being, like some inner thread being tensioned. Winter swimming takes this to a new level. It brings you closer to the essence of yourself, your life, and the potential of all that flows from this. It invites you to live more simply, with less stimulus yet in the knowledge you are tapping into an infinitely richer source. It’s not for everyone and yet it calls me home.
Read this...
Discover more about winter sea swimming and how to untap your resilience in Tamsin’s book, I Am An Island by Tamsin Calidas, £16.99, Doubleday COUNTRY HOMES & INTERIORS
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