My year of lidos

I love being rained on. I love the snow. I love being cold. I love weather and being connected to it in a very real sense. I love the extremes. I also love the heat and the sun beating down on me. I love the sky. And I think a deep desire or yearning to be connected to the elements is one of the reasons I love swimming in lidos.

And like a sunflower whose head follows the sun round as it travels the horizon so I follow lidos round as the seasons change. This is my love letter to lidos…

Lido 1

I swim in this lido in Autumn

This lido is 50m long and is heated, it is made mostly of London brick. Brightly coloured changing rooms line the length of the pool. This lido opened in 1932, was closed in 1988 and reopened after a really long campaign to save it, in 2006.

I swim in this lido in Autumn, when the air temperature finally begins to drop, because it’s heated and my regular swimming buddy, Mari, can’t cope with the cold water of my usual unheated lido. So as autumn beds in, we need to find somewhere where she can swim without her hands and feet going white and looking like an alarming waxwork.

There is a chill in the air, and it’s September, and this lido is full of leaves. Who thought that building a lido and then surrounding it with many many large trees would be a good idea?! I’m sure that leaves are the bane of any lido operators, and many lifeguards lives. But I love the leaves.

I love that the leaves mug you as you are swimming along in a dreamworld, and suddenly, surprisingly, a cold wet hand grabs your armpit and scares the hell out of you! Oh! It’s only a leaf! I love the shapes that the fallen leaves make on the bottom of the pool as you swim up and down. However what I love the most of all is that I’m 50 years old and yet the best fun I could possibly have at the weekend is going to this lido and swimming a length with my swimming buddy Mari and playing ‘who can collect the most leaves in a length.’ The rules are easy. You swim a length of freestyle and as you swim you grab desperately at the leaves that are floating around, trying not to break your stroke. Once you have a handful of leaves you can’t grab any more, unless you either transfer from the ‘grabbing hand’ to the collecting hand, or if you stuff them down the front of your cozzie. When Mari and I get to the deep end we pile our leaves on the edge of the pool and count them up. The swimmer with the biggest pile wins!

When I swim at this lido I never use the indoor changing facilities even though there is a chill in the air. To me, changing outside in the little changing rooms that line the pool, in the semi dark, and the cold, are all part of the experience. Shivering as we make the dash, from the changing cubicles to the refuge of the outdoor shower is all part of the experience for me. I always choose one on the side furthest from the showers.

When Mari and I bring new people to this lido, we shake our heads despairingly if they choose the inside changing rooms and indoor showers.

This lido must be the busiest lido of them all. Sunday mornings are full of triathletes and swimming clubs, of thirty something friends, of local hipsters with beards and fixed wheel bikes, of women of a certain age in dubious bikinis not giving a damn, of families with young children. I get the sense that this lido serves its community perfectly.

Make no mistake though, this lido is not for relaxing — it is always a hive of bustle and tumble turns and business like swimming. This lido is fully laned — there is no recreational swimming area in this lido. This lido means business. Even the sunbathers and onlookers have a determined look about them. Even in the colder months, when there is steam rising from water, the lido is busy and people are ploughing up and down. This lido is where it’s at.

At this Lido, Mari and I spend a perfect midday hour every Sunday dashing up and down the lane, with her leading and me following behind in her wake. I try to invent swimming drills that she is bad at and I am good at so that I can keep up with her! One day, as we were puffing and panting at the end of a hard session someone said to us “what are you training for?” Mari and I grinned and said ‘we are training for life’.

Lido 2

I swim in this lido in Winter

This lido is also 50m long and is heated. This lido opened in 1939 and was the last LCC lido to be opened. It was the first LCC lido to have a kiddies pool! This lido managed to stay open — albeit on and off — until the early noughts when it closed down for a few years. In 2012, after refurbishment, it reopened again as a heated lido.

I only discovered this lido two years ago when someone posted a photo of it online. It’s not close to where I live. It’s not convenient to get to. It’s my autumn lido’s younger cousin, it’s also heated, it’s but yet (shhhh) it’s quiet! I swim in this lido because my autumn lido is just too busy nowadays. a victim of its own success — although I don’t begrudge it that success for one moment.

I swim in this lido because it’s January. I swim in this lido because I’ve made a new year’s resolution, and I’ve signed up to do some seemingly unfathomably long swim in June, and I need to prepare by getting some long distance training under my belt. But long distance training is miserable indoors, I couldn’t bear that. I have to swim outside. I yearn for it.

This lido is really busy from 9–10 on a Sunday morning but after that — everyone disappears.

I love that this lido has five lanes for ‘training’ but also has a really substantial area for ‘free swimming’. I don’t like to swim in the lanes, to obey the rules, to tow the line. I want to do my own thing. At this lido, if I get my timing right, I can slip into my favourite position, on the free swimming side of the pool, right by the lane rope. This is a special spot. Here you can swim unhindered and unbumped into.

This lido has a bright white pool lining. When the sun shines, the water rippling casts shapes and shadows on the bottom of the pool. At this lido I am endlessly amused by the fact that I can blot out the shadow ripples by the intervention of my body as it blocks out the sun.

And because I only ever swim in this lido for three months of the year, at the coldest of times, this lido has a desolate paddling pool that I have never ever seen any small child play in. Does this really happen?

This lido has an friendly but concentrated and hard working vibe to it in the winter. This lido has a good mixture of hard workers and fun splashers, of slow breastrsrokers and tumble turners.

This lido also seems to have an informal club — a suspicious number of long distance swimmers, early in the season, cranking out unfeasibly long sessions all with a slightly haunted look in their eyes. ‘Only a 10k session today Sally! 100 x 100s!’. Blimey. Long distance swimmers come here from south London but many also travel up from Kent, to take refuge from the cold of the sea or lakes. I recognise myself in them — they have the expectant and determined look of people who are training for something. Even though I’ve only been coming to this lido for two years it feels comfortable and welcoming like an old glove.

Lido 3

I also swim in this lido in Winter

OK. This is not a lido in the conventional sense. This is a pond, a natural swimming habitat, which opened only last year, created as an art work by a property developer.

This is *definitely* not heated. Last year when this first opened I was so excited. I work five minutes walk from this lido. I emailed my work colleges — all 1500 of them — and asked who wanted to join me in a winter swimming club! 8 people replied. And so my winter swimming club formed. A merry band of co-working winter swimmers meet every Tuesday lunchtime throughout the winter.

This lido entices us, on a Tuesday lunchtime, to swap our grey anodyne office, the computers, the swivel chairs, the meeting rooms and flip charts and the day to day, for fierce cold, for breaking ice, for mind numbing widths, for gasps and swearing, for heroism in conquering fear. For wet hair dripping in meetings when you have been jolted alive.

The Tuesday lunchtime swim at this lido starts at 11am, when someone from our winter swimming club emails the group: “Who’s going today?!”. It’s only 11am and we are already anxious and slightly hysterical. There is safety in numbers in this lido. We hope to get a critical mass of swimmers each Tuesday. If there aren’t others it’s too easy to not go. As we scurry over there we wonder what temperature it’s going to be, we try to second guess it. We chatter nervously. We know it’s going to be cold.

This lido makes you have a freezing cold shower before you enter the freezing cold water! This lido is hilariously barbaric!

This lido has made 8 city dwellers, office workers, experience the pain and the pleasure of 2C water.

BUT — this lido has a sauna. Oh yeah baby. There is nothing that says winter swimming better than sitting with your colleagues, half naked, in a sauna, bright pink and hysterical.

And this lido, unlike the others, has grasses and flowers and water lillies and pond life. This lido also has snails. It also has building sites and site inspectors with hard hats overlooking it and cranes lurching overhead.

This lido is a place that makes you feel alive to your core, yes — it’s a sanctuary, an oasis — but it’s also an absurdity, a kick in the teeth for all that is fast and furious and grey and concrete and anonymous.

Lido 4

I swim in this lido in the Spring, and Summer.

This lido was opened in 1938 and is a Grade II listed building. This lido is 60m long and unheated and has a beautiful stainless steel dimpled pool lining that glints and twinkles in the sun like diamonds.

This lido is my lido. In Spring, and summer, and creeping into autumn, this lido is the place I’d rather be than any other. This lido makes everything right. I spend almost all of my weekends at this lido, swimming up and down counting “one two three breathe, one two three breathe” watching bubbles form on my finger tips as I push off and glide into the blue… This lido is my sanity.

As soon as I get the slightest whiff of spring I rush to this lido. As soon as the water temperature permits — maybe reaching 9C or 10C, I am there. I have been away swimming in warmer lidos during the winter, so that I can swim the distances I need to, but as soon as it’s possible I rush back to my lido.

But like a spurned lover this lido really makes you work hard before it gives you back its affection and welcomes you back with open arms. “You’ve been away for 5 months Sally, do you really think I will forgive you and welcome you back just like that?”

This lido gives you the cold shoulder in spring. This lido is austere in spring. Blue skies and warm air can mask an unforgiving, cold — and spurned — heart. As the water temperature hits 9C, 10C, 11C — I work my way up in distances and time spent in the water, testing my limits, shivering and shaking my way back into my lido’s heart. Trying to prove myself worthy of its affections once again.

In this lido Spring is to be embraced but also to be endured, spring goes by in a blur of tensed muscles, bone shaking, clenched jawed exhaustion. In this lido as I swim up and down, in the cold, with the pool to myself, counting the lengths, wondering how far I can push my body, how much I can take. In spring in this lido I watch the lifeguards work their way methodically around the concrete paving slabs with trowels and pressurised water jets, weeding and sprucing and cleaning ready for the new season.

In this lido, like many others, there is a gradual coming to life. Paint is licked, coats are dusted down, cracks are mended. We wait with anticipation the warmer air and the warmer water. Life is breathed into this lido, week by week, gradually, until before we know it we are full pelt into ‘The Season’.

This lido, my lido, wears many hats.

Because this lido is lined in stainless steel it takes on very different characters depending on the weather. This lido can be imposing and stern and bleak on some days, it can be lonely and harsh and grey. Sometimes this lido has nobody in it except me! Sometimes swimming in this lido on days like this make me feel happy and free and special. But sometimes this lido feels desolate and lonely and sad. Sometimes this lido makes me feel really small.

But this lido can twinkle like the finest jewels. This lido can beguile and seduce. This lido can be smooth a sheet and sparkling and enticing — just after the doors have been flung open and the first swimmers dives in, it’s at its fine tranquil and serene best. This lido makes me gasp with joy.

And then, sometimes this lido, my lido, can be crazy. This lido can have all of humanity present: on hot and sunny days the bustling life of the city rushes through the turnstiles to its water’s cool embrace.

This lido heaves with life and laughter and splashing and bombing and ice creams and families and lovers and lovers of water. This lido is jam-packed full of sunbathers and peacocks and thrill seekers, of chess players and somewhere in this anarchy there is space for some swimmers too. When my lido is like this I don’t care, I don’t protest. I slip in amongst the crowds, unnoticed, and swim up and down smiling, weaving in amongst the bodies, loving them, loving that they love my lido as much as I do.

The end

So. This is my year in lidos: my swims measured in leaves collected, in water temperatures endured, in time spent shaking. In opening hours (or closing times) carefully calculated. Counted out in arm strokes or breathes taken, and in lengths, in metres, and in kilometres swum. And just as the sunflowers moves to the rhythm of the sun rising and setting so I move round to the rhythm of the seasons, in a giant circle around London, following lidos.