The joys of sea swimming – Michele Brailsford

TAKING THE SEA SWIMMING PLUNGE

Writer

Michele Brailsford

Photographers

Pete Blach & Tim Smithens

As many in Folkestone are discovering – including our writer – there’s a lot going for the physical and mental health benefits of a regular sea dip

On the day my mother died, the sea at Mermaid Beach was full of white feathers. Either a seagull had died, perhaps from natural causes (or sewage), or it was a sign from Mum. She was finally happy again. I decided to believe the latter.

The last two years of her life had been blighted by dementia. Ida was prone to hallucinations with regular visits from Jeremy Kyle, a Donald Trump/Boris Johnson hybrid, and Harry Potter who stared in at her through the balcony window. The sea became a river set to dry up any day; and ants, attracted by the six spilt sugars in her tea, transformed into giant spiders that needed to be disposed of by a man with van whose name she couldn’t recall.

It wasn’t just the caring though; it was also relationships with siblings. They lived in London. It was down to me and my family to be on call 24 hours a day, including the wee small hours when she set off her fall alarm by accident. My children and partner were wonderful with her. Why couldn’t I be like them?

When it all became overwhelming, I’d take myself to the Mermaid and slump behind a rock to grieve the person I loved who was dead but not dead. The intelligent, feisty lady had been replaced by an increasingly angry and abusive stranger. But as soon as I stepped into the sea, all the frustration, grief, resentment and feelings of failure disappeared until the next day. It was pure relief.

It’s well documented that sea swimming boosts your mental health. Immersing yourself in cold water tricks you into thinking of something else far more immediate: survival. Whether it’s midwinter, when grey skies turn teal into ditch water brown, or the summer when sunlight flecks the waves gold, something magical happens. It settles you. Perhaps it’s the feeling of being part of something much bigger that provides a sense of perspective about your own struggles.

After dementia took away her ability to swallow, Ida died in August 2020 and the sea was there again for me. Two weeks later I met Anka, a fellow swimmer who had just lost her father to dementia and who was to become one of my closest friends.

Anka, the founder of Clan of Xymox, a Dutch band who were pioneers of 1980s darkwave, had been swimming around the Kent coast for a couple of years. “After coming off the ferry, just after my father died, I drove straight to the Mermaid for a swim. It’s something I always associate with letting go and rinsing away the emotional stress, and the sea connects me to my father who was in the merchant navy and loved the sea,” Anka says. “My mother was ill at the time too and the sea helped with the stress of dealing with her illness and eventual death this year.”

Learning to swim

This stress-busting ability also attracted Kirsty Hogben who took up sea swimming after a running injury in 2019. She challenged herself to complete 1,000 swims over two years and is now a sea swim coach after noticing demand for advice about sea swimming sky-rocketed during the pandemic.

“You can understand why it became so popular,” says Hogben. “It’s free and in the open air and it provides a community in terms of loneliness which affected a lot of people.”

As well as training to become a Safety Training Awards (STA) open sea swim coach, Hogben is now studying counselling to help swimmers with trauma, something she can relate to. “I was always very anxious, but now I’m far more resilient and calmer at dealing with stress,” she says. “Sea swimming gave me purpose. I haven’t found anything else like it. You feel alive and completely free in the sea. It’s like active meditation. Being in your mind and your body at the same time is a rare thing with all the technology.”

Another stalwart of Folkestone’s sea swimming community is Danish filmmaker Pete Blach, who became hooked in 2017 after visiting a winter bathing exhibition in his hometown Copenhagen.

“There was an audio recording of a woman talking about how the whole world disappeared, so I thought I’d give it a try,” says Blach. “Usually I have the winter blues, but I noticed that first ►

▼ Pete Blach

year they’d completely gone. I was far more positive and upbeat.”

Blach set up Folkestone Swimmers Facebook page with four other regular swimmers and waxed lyrical about sea swimming’s health benefits to everyone he met. Two years later there were 200 members and not a dryrobe in sight. Post-Covid membership stands at 1,700, with regular meet-ups for full-moon swims and BBQs, and offshoots like Folkestone Queer Swim, an inclusive group who meet twice a month.

Over the last four years Blach has been investigating different locations to set up a sauna like the Danes have on their coast. This summer he and other sea swimmers crowdfunded over £24,000 to transform an unused room at Folkestone Rowing Club in Sandgate into an electric-fired community sauna. The money came from donations, a silent disco, “naming hooks” and a £9,000 grant from Kent County Council.

The 12-person sauna, open from October to April, will cost £75 a year via club membership and is expected to open by early November.

You wait ages for a sauna and then, like buses, another has arrived in the town in the form of the mobile Steampunk Sauna. Tattoo artist Tim Smithens, aka Prison Style, crowdfunded £6,500 after Folkestone photographer George Cory showed him his book about saunas, Löyly Life.

“We talked about how it would be great to have one in the town,” said Smithens. “I used a small inheritance from my nan, life savings and crowdfunding to convert a horsebox into the wood-fired mobile sauna.”

The six-person sauna, made from Canadian cedar with Aspen seats, is also a free-standing piece of artwork decorated with Prison Style’s trademark doodles. Smithens will donate monthly to charity One Tree Planted based on how much kiln-dried birch fuel is used.

The sauna made its debut at September’s SALT + EARTH: Festival of Landscape, Seascape & The Environment. Depending on planning permission, it will be located just before Mermaid Beach, where you can hire it for £60 per hour for six people, or £15 per person.

Kirsty Hogben Sea Swim Confidence: kirstyhogben.com Folkestone’s Community Sauna: folkestoneseasauna@gmail.com Steampunk Sauna: steampunksauna@hotmail.com Folkestone Queer Swim: @folkestonequeerswim