Swimming with Agatha Christie

Author Matt Newbury tells us about the Agatha Christie Sea Swim – a swim with “an old fashioned vibe” that he co-founded with Sophie Pierce in 2010

The Agatha Christie Sea Swim was created by my good friend Sophie Pierce and myself back in 2010, as Torbay’s first ever mass participation swimming event. We never thought it would still be going all these years later, but at the start of September around 300 people took part in the one-mile swim between Broadsands Beach and Goodrington South. It heralded the start of the Agatha Christie Festival 2024 and is very much a celebration of the author’s love of sea swimming.

Each year, we alternate the swim between two of Agatha’s favourite beaches. One swim leaves from Beacon Cove, which is where Agatha first learnt to swim and takes people around to Meadfoot Sands, passing under London bridge Arch and past Thunder Hole, where it was once thought the devil lived. Back when Agatha was very young and in the times of segregated beaches, Beacon Cove was the ladies bathing place, while Meadfoot became one of the first places to allow mixed bathing.

This year’s route starts really close to Elberry Cove, where the body of the third victim, Sir Carmichael Clarke, was discovered in the ABC Murders. Agatha Christie’s grandson, Mathew Prichard shared with me that Elberry and Broadsands were favourite swim spots for Agatha and himself when they were staying at nearby Greenway for the summer holidays. The swim route takes people past Armchair Rock and an area known as Three Beaches, which is incredibly picturesque for swimmers.

The swim is a really lovely event with a good old-fashioned feel. I love the fact that people train all summer to take part in it and we always have a group of participants from Healthscape CIC, who use swimming and other outdoor activities to enhance people’s mental health and wellbeing. This year we also had a group of women called the Butterfly Club who had been training to do as much of the swim as possible using the butterfly stroke.

With sea swimming enjoying such a renaissance, it’s fantastic to be able to connected it back to the late Victorian, early Edwardian times of Agatha’s youth. In our book, Wild Swimming Torbay, Sophie and myself look into the early history of swimming, while also exploring this beautiful Bay. I particularly love the story of Tack Collins, who rowed out to Saddle Rock with a bucket of cement to create a diving platform to train for the 1908 Olympics. As one of the oldest competitors, he came last, but it’s a wonderful Eddie the Eagle Edwards-type of story.

Agatha Christie talks about sea swimming throughout her autobiography and shared some really amusing anecdotes. Royal Torbay Yacht Club is situated above the former ladies’ bathing cove and while members couldn’t see the beach itself and the old-fashioned bathing machines, they could see the swim platform. Agatha’s father, who was a member of the club, said that lots of the men would use their opera glasses to try and catch a glimpse of the women swimming in what they hopefully thought of as a state of almost nudity. “I don’t think we can have been very appealing in those shapeless garments,” Agatha recalls.

This year’s swim was a tad stressful in the days leading up to it, with an easterly wind forecast, which would have made the route impossible. Heavy rains a few days before also triggered a pollution alert. Fortunately, the wind direction shifted and we had two full tide rotations without any rain at all, making the swim able to go ahead at the last minute. The lovely smiling faces of participants and the joyful feedback made it all worthwhile.

What surprises people is how adventurous Agatha Christie was. She enjoyed horse riding, roller skating, skiing and, famously, travelling. When she was in South Africa she learnt to surf, and when travelling home via Hawaii, became one of the first westerners to ever try stand-up surfing. But it was swimming that she enjoyed right throughout her life.

In the final poignant epilogue to her autobiography, she describes swimming in the sea in Torbay with her daughter Rosalind as one of her greatest memories. She also mourns certain pleasures she could no longer enjoy in her final years: “Long walks are off, and, alas, bathing in the sea; filet steaks and apples and raw blackberries (teeth difficulties) and reading fine print.”

Images by Appleton Event Photography

The Agatha Christie Festival takes place right across the author’s home town of Torquay and the rest of the Bay every September. To find out more visit agathachristiefestival.com

Matt Newbury and Sophie Pierce are the author’s of ‘Wild Swimming Torbay’, which is available (alongside their other books) at wildthingspublishing.com