Waterlog 3: Rhossili Beach, Gower Peninsula, South Wales

Recently, I’ve been reading Waterlog, by Roger Deakin, a potent and poetic defence of our right to swim anywhere we please – in ponds, in rivers, in the sea – anywhere that looks cool and inviting, and several that look downright perishing! I now know to ignore the omnipresent threatening signs warning of the risk of Leptospirosis (chances of actually catching it – 1 in 33,000) and take my dip anywhere I please. In fairness, I ignored them anyway – but it’s nice to have some expert backing.

In that vein, I thought I’d write up some of my favourite bathing places throughout the British Isles.

Rhossili Beach, Gower Peninsula 

The Gower peninsula is an extraordinary place. A big comma on the South Wales coastline between Swansea bay and Cardigan bay, it offers largely untouched countryside, one of the many candidates for the grave of King Arthur and the best surfing beaches in Wales. The favourite place both for swimming and surfing is Rhossili beach, at the far end of the peninsula, a long straight stretch of sand facing out directly to the west, flanked at either end by two small islands with tidal causeways: Burry Holms to the north, and Worm’s Head to the south.

One of my great regrets about leaving Cardiff was that I never, in three years, managed to get to the end of Worm’s Head, a long, snaky ribbon of bright green grass extending out into sea. Once I got as far as the inner head, a ludicrously steep dinosaur spine of a hill that confronts you as you cross the causeway. Then, however, the tide came back in, and we had to rush back across before we were cut off. The far end of the peninsula remains a mystery to me, fitfully illuminated by long hours gazing at Ordnance Survey maps, or re-reading Dylan Thomas’s classic short story ‘Who Do You Wish Was With Us’.

I’ve swum twice off Rhossili beach. The first time was on May 3rd, 2010 – I remember this particularly because it was 200 years since Lord Byron swam the Hellespont, the tumultuous Turkish strait dividing Europe from Asia. He was in good, romantic company – the legendary lover Leander is supposed to have swum across each night to visit his lover Hero, swimming back the next morning, until his amorous career was cut short by a tragic, but entirely predictable, death by drowning. Byron survived the feat, which he immortalised in a witty minor gem of a poem. I was not out to do anything so staggering, but a commemorative swim seemed in order, and the weather was most propitious. It was a warm day, and lunching on Rhossili Down I saw my first swallow of the summer. By the time we reached the beach, I was very keen for a swim – and it just so happened that the tide had come in far enough to cut Burry Holms off from the mainland. I swam out through the cool salt water in a Byronic breaststroke, and managed to land on the island without losing any skin to the rocks, which is always the trickiest part. I wandered up and down, waving at my friends back on the mainland, trying to avoid stepping on stinging nettles and wondering how it would feel to have swum the 3 mile distance from Europe to Asia, and swum back again, enjoying the small act of homage to my favourite poet.

Eighteen months later, in November of 2011, I wasn’t expecting to go swimming at all. I had no towel, no swimming trunks, nothing. It was too cold, I told myself, and I was a solemn third year undergraduate now. I was leading walks, armed with map and compass, instead of faithfully following on behind. A little Byronic posing on exposed pinnacles was all I could expect. But fate brought me two people equally as crazy as I was, keen to make the most of the fading Autumn warmth. With Rob I shared a tendency to sandpaper stubbliness, and a love of intrepid, broad-brimmed hats. On the way up, I nicknamed him Ragdoll for his habit of flopping forward bonelessly whenever I applied the brakes. Then there was Lauren, who had proposed the swim at lunch, as if sea-bathing in November was the most natural thing in the world. Before her slow, mischievous smile all the practical difficulties seemed as nothing. As we plunged together into the icy November sea, jumping and splashing and spluttering, I bethought myself of the words of J.K. Rowling:

There are some things you can’t share without liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them.

This, I decided, was another.