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Water wildlife: ground nesting birds
While you’re no doubt wary of disturbing nesting swans while swimming outdoors, it’s always worth considering your impact on ground…
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Water wildlife: Great diving beetle
Susanne Masters introduces us to the Great diving beetle (Dytiscus marginalis), remarkable predators inhabiting slow-moving waterways, which carry a bubble…
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Diving for treasure: a history of pearl diving
Pearl diving is dangerous work that’s often been delegated to the marginalised and dispossessed. Elaine K Howley explores the history…
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Marine meditation: is freediving a natural extension of outdoor swimming?
Is freediving the preserve of the super-human or a natural extension of outdoor swimming and a gateway to a new…
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This must be underwater love
Photographer Lexi Laine invites us to dive into her underwater world. Words by Rowan Clarke.
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Andy Donaldson: Flying the flag for mental health
Oceans Seven challenger Andy Donaldson tells us why he's raising money for the Black Dog Institute, a mental health charity…
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Changing seasons, changing climate, changing strokes: the long history of swimming
Have you ever wondered about the origins of swimming? How about how we came to swim outdoors in the cooler…
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Myth busting: “Everything in the southern hemisphere water wants to eat me!”
Great whites, blue-ringed octopus and reef-dwelling cone snails: marine biologist, writer and broadcaster Dr Helen Scales introduces us some of…
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The colour of cold: swimming in Cape Town, South Africa
With water temperatures averaging 13 degrees Celsius and air temperatures seldom above 32 degrees, Cape Town, South Africa, is a…
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Brave New Waters
Author and Wild Swimming Brother, Jack Hudson traded his freshwater dips in the UK for a salty life in Australia…
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Women of the water
Women of the Water, by photographer Ana Elisa Sotelo Van Oordt, is a series of landscapes and nude installations exploring…
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Films, podcasts and books for swimmers
An investigation into water’s true nature, water-based adventure films and an exhilarating journey into deep time: what to read, watch…
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Meet illustrator, designer and cold water swimmer Evie Grace
Evie Grace studied illustration, graphic design and photography at university in Aberdeen before moving to Vancouver for a couple of…
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Myth busting: Can a pike bite my toes?
If you have swum in freshwater, you have swum with pike. They lurk – often unseen – in rivers, ponds,…
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Swimming on Scotland’s beaches
Stacey McGowan Holloway picks her top wild swimming spots from Scotland’s coast and islands, as featured in her guide book…
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Putting the sass and style into modest swimwear
If swimming is for everyone, why is it that some needs are still not met when it comes to suitable…
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Spring equinox: a swim to the music of time
As we approach the spring (or autumn) equinox, swimmers across the world celebrate the beginning of the seasons with their…
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Making time: a history of timekeeping
From stopwatches and Channel hardy pocket watches to the Swim-o-Matic, a semi-automatic timer accurate to one-thousandth of a second: Elaine…
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Sarah Thomas: Marathon Swimmer
Marathon swimmer Sarah Thomas reflects on the enormous highs and sinking lows of the past few years.
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Lido guide: spring arrival
As spring heralds the opening of seasonal lidos, author of The Lido Guide, Emma Pusill, examines the challenges facing small,…
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While you’re at the water: fossil hunting
Beaches, riverbanks and riverbeds can all reveal fossils, which have been buried for millennia. Susanne Masters has your guide to…
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Environmental issue: wet wipes
Imagine swimming past a man-made reef of wet wipes! Misleadingly labelled as ‘flushable’, wet wipes are well known for causing…
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Foraging for swimmers: watercress
Offering a gentle rendition of wasabi’s heat, watercress (Nasturtium officinale) is one of the oldest known leaf vegetables consumed by…
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Songs of the Sea: travelling with grey whales
Doreen Cunningham tells Rowan Clarke how her experience charting grey whales’ migratory journeys became the foundation for a compelling tale…
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All about… Yoga and wild swimming retreats
A yoga and wild swimming retreat? Not at the same time surely? Don’t be silly. Yoga and paddleboarding is definitely…