Kate Rew is the founder of The Outdoor Swimming Society, which has been encouraging
people to discover the joys of swimming outdoors since 2006, and has grown into a community
of over 200,000 members.
We joined Kate for an autumn swim at Oakhill Ponds in Somerset, followed by a flask of Harth
hot chocolate to warm up afterwards. She told us how it all began with childhood adventures
swimming in the rivers of Devon, the friendships that form in the water, why she believes the
best swims are free, and how hot chocolate became a much-loved tradition at Outdoor
Swimming Society events.
Can you take us back to the beginning and tell me what first drew you to outdoor
swimming and then how did that grow into The Outdoor Swimming Society?
I grew up on a farm in Devon, and it had a river that ran through it. So in long summer holidays,
running around in a fairly feral existence, I started going on expeditions down the river from one
end of the farm to the other. And I honestly think that that blueprint of going from A to B, and
making a way in water is literally the exact same thing I've spent a lot of the last couple of
decades that I've been involved in The outdoor swimming society doing.
How has your relationship with outdoor swimming changed over the years? And is it still
the same experience that you fell in love with, when you were swimming in the river as a
child? Or do you find yourself getting something different from it now?
I think that's really interesting because there's literally endless ways to be an outdoor swimmer
or to swim, and they constantly evolve and change. I don't think we're ever the same swimmer
as we were last year or next year. So I find it an ever expanding kind of passion. There might be
years when I want to do a distance swim, and so my swimming will become about training and
getting into the mindset of being able to swim for 2 hours at a time. At the moment, I'm planning
on learning long distance butterfly over winter, which will keep me occupied in a swimming pool
where I don't generally like to be, so I keep some of the physicality of being a swimmer up over
winter. But in between that, I'll be just taking really short, sharp plunges in the dark because it's
always dark by the time I get to the pond. Sometimes, in the summer, I might be swimming with
my kids, and it's about jumping into the sea and messing around, or being in a hot place. I just
think swimming is not one thing, but one thing probably always is to me is a way to connect to
the pace that I'm in. It connects me to the seasons, to nature, it connects me to a much quieter
place, probably on the inside, and it generally connects me to the people that I'm with in a really
kind of pure and authentic way.
You've helped bring together an enormous community of outdoor swimmers. What has
surprised you most about the people that you've met along the way?
How readily we all make friends. I think that's what surprises me about the community is how at
ease you can feel with someone that you really don't know. Swimming for me can lead to very
fast friendships and very heartfelt ones as well. It's as if you understand something quite
fundamental about each other, and have no need of swapping the normal biographical detail
that you might when you meet someone. It doesn't matter your age, gender, profession or
circumstances. It doesn't matter if you're gay or straight, single or married, what you do for a job,
you can just bond over this thing that you both love. And that makes for really free and easy
relationships that can really mean something. It's a fantastic community to be part of.
Hot chocolate has been part of your outdoor swimming adventure for years. How did that
tradition begin and what makes it an important part of the experience for you?
I would like to say I do not have a sweet tooth. So the fact that hot chocolate is a big part of my
swimming journey is really quite unusual. There were years when outdoor swimming was
obsessed with cake, and I felt positive to be alienated from my own movement, because I had
no interest in cake whatsoever. So I don't really know, it must have been biological that after a
cold swim, what you feel like is something like hot chocolate, something hot, something sweet,
and something with some calories in it. It's just a very natural pairing.
For reasons that have been lost in the midst of time, the first swim event that I organised was
called Breast Strokes, and it was a one mile swim, and I did a version of it in Windermere, a
version of it in Serpentine, and the Windermere version came first. And this was in 2007. And at
that point, everyone thought swimming was dirty, dangerous, or illegal. So, I actually set up a
charity event, not just because I wanted to raise money for breast cancer, because you literally
had to dare people to go swimming in a lake, hardly any one was doing it voluntarily. So the
thing was, come and swim for breast cancer in this event, and people actually got sponsored,
not because they were doing a mile, but because they were getting into a lake. We swam
around an island, and just to make it seem more palatable to people we said that they could
dock into the shallows to have a hot chocolate, and they literally slithered up like seals, were
handed mugs of hot chocolate, and then swam back to the finish. And I think it just stayed, we
had it at the Serpentine, and then I went on to set up the Dark 10K, the Bantham Swoosh, and
the Hurly Burly, and all of those years, it was just a tradition that we always had hot chocolate on
the finish line, and swimmers would come out, and they would generally have a different
swimmer's mug, it would often be an enamel mug with that year’s event on it. And the logistics
that went into making sure that you would get enough hot chocolate for 100 swimmers, who
would all emerge from this long swim at roughly the same time, were huge, but we never failed
them. We always had a hot chocolate on the finish line.
Is there a particular stretch of water that you return to again and again and what makes it
special?
There isn't, actually. Anywhere close, that's got to push it up in the favourites. I do think this is
what is different from the community this time round, is that we travel. It's probably why I
managed to love it so much, that I don't have a favourite spot. Normally my favourite swim is the
last one that I've just done and that means you're not chasing an experience that was better last
time. You're always really welcoming the new, and I think maybe that's one of the reasons why I
find swimming such an expanding kind of lens on the world. It's not about going back, it's always
about going forward.
Outdoor swimming has become much more popular since you founded the Society. Do
you think there's anything that's changed for the better and is there anything that you
miss about the early days?
What's changed for the better is that there are so many more of us now, and I think that's
absolutely fantastic. What I miss is it being completely uncommercial. Unfortunately, whenever
anything gets popular, then the kind of machinery of a marketplace moves in. And that's a kind
of shame to me, because there's something very special about just taking yourself swimming
and being in charge of yourself. And I think a lot of the riches that come from swimming; from
the adventure, the exploration, the connection, the sense of just something genuine in your life
comes from not paying for it, and the minute that you start paying to be led or to be allowed in
somewhere, it just changes the entire experience of what you're doing. I know that we need all
these venues and I know that the commercialism has a good aspect, but I honestly think that
the most perfect swims are the free ones. And I hope, actually, that the huge number of people
that are swimming will lead to a greater right to swim, and will lead to the establishment of more
rights and more bathing spots. And I hope that we can keep moving in that direction towards
greater free swimming rather than greater venues or led experiences. I don't want restrictions
put on swimming, that you can only do it at this certain time, because otherwise it's dangerous,
that sort of stuff. I think the great thing about swimming is taking responsibility for your own self
and managing your own risks.
For someone who's curious about outdoor swimming but hasn't yet taken the plunge,
where would you suggest that they begin?
Probably not in midwinter, but you would be amazed by how many people did that in lockdown. It
used to be that you had to be a summer swimmer for at least a couple of years before you got
the idea that you might want to do it in winter, and then in lockdown, everyone just jumped in,
straight into the cold, and we're like, oh, so you could do it that way too! So I think begin where
your interest is. There are so many swimmers around, the chances are there's someone in your
circle who swims, or that, there's somewhere nearby that people swim or there's a wild swim
group, or there's an open water lake, or there's a coach or there's a beach. Honestly, just use
your curiosity and begin there. There's no one right way to do it. The only thing I would say is
just start gently, whatever it is you're planning, the safest way to do it would be to go in a still body water and stay close to shore. So definitely do that, don’t try a bay swim in a heavy storm,
as your first!
