#4 - ‘Show’s Over’ @ The Crook ‘o Lune, River Lune

By far the most unpleasant swim I've ever experienced in my life. And I'm including 'personal survival skills' pyjama week off of an 80s primary school swim programme in that. 

We really need to get better at researching the more local swim spots because it took us a while to find somewhere that looked vaguely safe enough to be able to enter and exit easily.

We changed under the bridge. Misled privacy.

Before long we were joined by an endless line of elderly ramblers each with their own set of walking aids, wise words and remarks of disbelief as they passed us one by one; 'you're not going in are you?', 'there are actual sheets of ice further down the river you know?', 'you must be mad' (I'm beginning to realise that this one becomes more of a mantra to a cold water swimmer rather than the barbed declaration it is often intended to be).

Underfoot felt nothing short of disgusting as the brown river water chundered around our calves.

I wanted out. But it became immediately apparent by the sudden shouts of encouragement from the iron bridge above that we were being watched (and as we later discovered, filmed) by our friendly ramblers who, in all the time it had taken us to find a good spot, had made it up to a virtuous viewing point. 

It was the quickest I've ever submerged. We were met with a prompt round of applause, we hugged for effect (and relief) and got the hell out of there. 

I scrambled through the muddy grass and wet leaves, freezing to the core, I couldn't feel my toes...then I heard a shout from the bridge 'tell me your number and I'll send you a video'. This was all well and good in theory...but standing there shivering, dreaming of my dry robe, repeating numbers over and over again (she was most definitely hard of hearing bless her) feeling weaker by the minute (beginning to doubt whether the numbers were even coming out of my mouth in the correct order) I considered whether the footage was worth potential frost bite. 

I ran away. 

By some miracle, the video appeared on my phone back at the car.

And we're in shot.

And despite some of the commentary from these darling walkers being a bit prickly, I've kept it on. Because it adds a little something to the moment (have a look and a listen to it on my Facebook profile 'Messy Water').

Back at the car we scrabbled around the bottoms of our bags for lost change and pieced together enough for two hot chocolates from Woodie's Hut in the car park (they don't take cards). And I don't know if it was the relief of the 'swim' being over...but it was the best hot chocolate I've ever tasted.