Diving in the deep end

I often get inspired while swimming, and this post is no exception. While enjoying a swim in my local Lido this summer, I started to reflect on how much swimming has been a part of my life – and then of course had to write it down. Here it is…

I love the water. And I love swimming. Maybe it’s something to do with my birth sign, Pisces, or maybe it’s because of my Mum, who has been a swimmer her whole life and, now aged 90, still does lengths a couple of times a week at her local pool. She made sure my brother and I had swimming lessons as kids and we both grew up to be strong swimmers.

I don’t remember a time in my childhood when I wasn’t swimming. As an infant, I was taken to “Water Babies” classes. Then there were the obligatory primary school swimming lessons, accompanied by coloured strip badges that were sewn onto your swimming costume. I would go swimming in the school holidays and at weekends in our local pool.

I swam in various clubs after school (in one, I was the only girl in my group and happened to be the best, so the teacher was always asking me to “show the boys how it’s done”. I got used to the eye rolls. However, I wasn’t wholly unpopular, as I found out one of the boys had a crush on me. I must have been about 10!).

I took part in school and Brownie swimming galas and often won. For a while, as a pre-teen, I remember regularly going swimming with my mum and a family friend on a Saturday night.

“I was the only girl in my age-group and happened to be the best, so the swimming teacher was always asking me to ‘show the boys how’s it’s done’. I got used to the eye rolls”

I went to a middle school for two years in Wimbledon that had its own (unheated) outdoor pool in the far corner of its large sports field. I only remember swimming in it a handful of times – probably just as well, because it was so cold it felt like icicles were hitting my feet.

In fact, a quick Google search reveals I’m not the only one who remembers that icy swimming pool.

“Even at the height of summer, it was arctic in that pool”, says one Facebook user in a post dedicated to memories of the pool at that school.

Another alumna describes it as being “so cold it was almost impossible to breathe” while another one adds: “that pool was just awful. Freezing cold even in summer. Put me off swimming for life.”

Luckily, it didn’t put me off. Once I went to secondary school, however, it didn’t seem to be considered ‘cool’ to like swimming any more. If you went swimming with your friends at the weekend, you usually just sat in the jacuzzi. (We used to go to Putney leisure centre, where we were lucky enough to have one.)

I was surprised at the excuses my classmates made to get out of school swimming lessons. One girl said she couldn’t go because it was the time of the month. Another girl said she felt “a bit tired”, so her mum had advised her not to go in case she caught a cold. I was also shocked to meet other kids who, in Year 7, had never learnt to swim.

“I was surprised at the excuses my classmates made to get out of swimming lessons. One girl said she ‘felt a bit tired’ so her mum had advised her not to go, in case she caught a cold”

Although swimming lessons didn’t last very long at secondary school, a friend reminded me recently that, in the sixth form, she and I used to walk down to the local pool every week for a swim. I think it must have been during General Studies, where we could choose what we wanted to do. We were clearly the only ones out of the whole year group who actually wanted to go swimming!

In the summertime

Of course on holiday, we also swam – wherever we were. As a young teenager I spent three weeks in Vienna one summer while my parents worked on Blue Danube Radio, the English-language radio station there, and my Mum still managed to find swimming pools for us to go to on her days off.

While other people queued up to admire the beautiful Baroque summer palace of Schönbrunn, we walked straight past the Schloß and headed for the huge, outdoor pool in the grounds that probably not many tourists knew (or cared) about.

We then spent a week in the Austrian Tirol, at a hotel with an outdoor, heated pool. I remember how amazing it felt, swimming outside at the start of the day, breathing in the early morning mountain air and the scent of the pine trees, and seeing the steam rising off the pool.

A couple of years later, we spent a week by Lake Balaton in Hungary – apparently the largest freshwater lake in central Europe – where I swam everyday until I unfortunately picked up an ear infection. (This involved a trip to the local hospital – where we got totally lost in translation and ended up at the dentist! Still, that’s another story…)

That didn’t deter me from visiting the thermal baths in Budapest, where we were a bit disappointed to find that swimming was actually taboo and the men stood and played chess in the water while the women sat demurely round the edges and chatted with their friends.

In between, there were always holidays by the water in France, whether it was swimming in rivers, pools and lakes in the Dordogne region, or in the sea on the Côte d’Azur.

Keeping my head above water

I can also proudly boast that I swam in the Dead, the Med, the Red and the Black seas before the age of 21. The first time I “swam” in the Dead Sea (I use the term loosely, as swimming in it is actually pretty difficult) was when I was 19, in March 1995 while I was volunteering on a kibbutz in northern Israel in my gap year between school and University.

It was a cloudy day, not too hot, and floating on top of the salty water (if you tried to swim, all you somehow managed to do was a somersault) was quite pleasant.

However, when I returned two years later in August, as a student doing a journalistic internship, my “swim” in the Dead Sea wasn’t nearly so enjoyable.

We’d slept for about two hours the previous night in a Bedouin campground in the Judean Desert, then got up before it was light to hike up Masada, a mountain-top fortress overlooking the Dead Sea, to watch the sun rise over it.

After a dusty night in the desert followed by our sweaty hike up and down Masada, we were looking forward to cooling off.

We’d have to wait though, because entering the Dead Sea is hardly refreshing – it’s more like getting into a warm bath. (A friend had once described it as “like swimming in honey”, and I could see her point.)

The Dead Sea is actually a landlocked salt lake and is the earth’s lowest point on dry land, which makes the whole area surrounding it extremely hot and humid in summer.

To top it off, I was wearing those chunky canvas shoes that were popular in the 1990s and had developed blisters which, I discovered then, do not do well in salty water – they stung like mad.

Afterwards I was very relieved to cool down under the refreshing Ein Gedi waterfall, which felt totally fabulous after the sticky, hot Dead Sea.

“A friend described the Dead Sea as ‘like swimming in honey’, and I could see her point”

I can’t actually tell you much about swimming in the Red Sea as I went there in 1995 when I was on the kibbutz and they paid for all the volunteers to go on a three-day trip to Eilat, a resort town at the southern tip of Israel.

All I can remember is having a barbecue on the beach and being amazed that you could see Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia from there, all at once.

I swam in the Black Sea many times when I spent a month teaching English in Odesa, Ukraine in 1996 (you can read about this in my blog post here).

I should add that I have also swum in the Sea of Galilee – a.k.a Lake Tiberias, as it’s a lake, not a sea – in northern Israel.

According to Wikipedia, it’s the second lowest lake in the world, after the Dead Sea – but it’s nowhere near as humid or sticky.

I went there twice. The first was for the weekend with some of my fellow kibbutz volunteers – my main memory of which is going to a pub and falling asleep before I even finished my cocktail, as it was our first day off from the kibbutz and we were shattered.

The second time was in August 1997 when I rented a bike with a friend and cycled part of the way around the lake. It was hot. I’m not sure we managed a dip that day, but we’d spent the previous day at one of the lake’s designated beaches, so I definitely got my swimming fix in.

At University, unfortunately swimming took a bit of a back seat and I’m ashamed to say I even lived for two years right next to the campus’ outdoor pool – and only swam in it a couple of times. I also later lived almost opposite Tooting Bec Lido in London for three years, and never once went. I did use to go to the indoor pool at my gym, however.

Rediscovering swimming in Colombia

In the early 00s I lived for more than two years in Medellín, Colombia – and fell in love with swimming again. It was hard not to, given the city’s tropical climate and the number of open-air pools everywhere (indoor pools were unheard of).

In fact, many people had swimming pools in their unidades, their residential apartment complexes. We didn’t have one where we lived, so I used my student pass (I was initially studying Spanish there) and would go swimming at the University at lunchtime.

At weekends, Paisas, as people from Medellín are called, often go to stay in fincas (roughly translated as farms, but they’re really country villas) owned by family or friends, which always have a pool if they’re in a hot area.

My favourite times in Colombia were when we were invited (almost always at the last minute, as is the custom) to friends’ fincas where we would spend the weekend by the pool, surrounded by palm trees, mountains and cicadas.

You could easily spot the Brit – I always headed straight for the water and rarely came out of it, whereas the Colombians would lounge for hours by the pool, drinking Cuba Libre cocktails, laughing and telling shaggy dog stories.

One time we spent a weekend at my boyfriend’s boss’ finca, located in a beautiful spot about 1.5 hours south of Medellín. I stayed in the pool for so long my highlights turned green – much to my horror.

Everything was going swimmingly…

In early 2004 we went on holiday to South Africa, where I was looking forward to getting acquainted with the warm waters of the Indian Ocean. However, when we finally found a beach to swim off, I managed to swim for about 5 minutes before encountering a jellyfish – its dark blue tentacles still wrapped around my leg as I ran swiftly out of the waves. It stung like hell – worse than the Dead Sea blisters.

Fast forward to 2026, and I have discovered my local Lido, in Guildford – apparently one of England’s few original 1930s outdoor pools.

I was inspired to go there after reading the novel The Lido by Libby Page, all about a community trying to save the Brockwell Lido in southeast London from being destroyed.

The descriptions of the narrator’s regular early morning swims in the cool water really made me want to do the same.

To test the waters, I took my daughter and her friend on a hot day in May half term. I’d bought tickets online, but when we got there at 10.30am (when it opens to families) the car park was already full, so we had to park elsewhere and then queue for 45 minutes to get in.

Luckily the pool is huge (50m long by 27m wide) so even with tonnes of people, it didn’t feel too crowded. It was quite hard to find a shady spot in the (4.5 acres of) grounds, but we managed.

We had a picnic and my daughter and her friend amused themselves (there are also three water slides) while I sat and read my book in the shade, going for a dip every so often.

Spurred on by this, in the summer holidays I knew I was going to be child-free one morning – and I also knew it was going to be a scorcher that day.

I booked an adult lane swimming session online – it’s open from 6.30-10am for lane swimming only – and turned up just before 9am. I managed to get a space in the car park and for some reason was surprised to see that the entire pool was divided into lanes.

There were swimmers of all ages and abilities there – the really serious ones even wore what looked like snorkels and flippers. I felt like an impostor. It wasn’t as cold as I expected – in fact, it was bliss.

“The really serious swimmers even wore what looked like snorkels and flippers. I felt like an impostor”

I’d planned to only swim for 30 minutes, but 45 minutes later I was still doing laps in the cool water and, slightly mesmerised by the sunlight dancing on it and the clear blue sky overhead, couldn’t bring myself to get out.

The only thing that made me eventually heave myself out of the pool was the fact that the lane swimming session was coming to an end and they were going to clear the water to make room for all the families now lining up outside.

Feeling remarkably refreshed and invigorated, I made my way out, glided past the long queue of people waiting to get in, and drove off.

Now we’re into September and sadly summer is becoming a distant memory, but I’m looking forward to my next al-fresco swimming session, whenever that may be. I’m even tempted to sign up for a membership – after all, the Lido is open all year.

I’m not sure that I’m brave enough to go when it’s freezing outside though.