Build your own adventure

There’s enormous joy to be found in building your own adventure, not for performance but for play, says editor Ella Foote

One of the most wonderful things about outdoor swimming is that any kind of swimmer can find purpose in the water. Whether you swim for the joy, general health and fitness or for the challenge all swimmers are welcome in the water.

But the idea that every swim has to become a challenge, a crossing, a badge, a medal or a battle with a GPS trace is something that simply isn’t true. Many of the best swims begin in a much smaller way. Two swim pals staring at a map in a café. Someone pointing across a waterway and wondering if they could swim it or wandering up stream to simply float back. That’s how some legendary event routes were born, too. Not in boardrooms or race HQs, but through playful experiments. Curious swimmers trying an idea out for themselves. Following bends in rivers, linking coves together, swimming to the pub or out to islands. There’s enormous joy in building your own adventure, not for performance but for play.

Start with a map, not a medal

You don’t need to invent the next marathon swim. In fact, the smaller and sillier the idea, the better. Could your swim involve:

• Catching a local train upstream and swimming back down?
• Linking three favourite dipping spots together?
• Swimming to a bakery for coffee and cinnamon buns?
• Circling an island you’ve always looked at from shore?
• Creating a ‘progressive picnic’ swim with snacks at different points?
• Visiting a place only accessible by water?

A DIY swim has a different flavour from an organised event. It feels slightly secret and handmade. Because you designed it yourself, every detail suddenly matters in a lovely way. The weather, logistics, café opening hours and the friend who always forgets goggles. You become swimmer, navigator, ferryman and snack strategist all at once.

Top tips:

• Make it fun, but safe. Consider all the usual factors – conditions, water quality, emergency plans, entry and exits.
• Keep it achievable. Resist making it massive. Small swims in amazing places will hold as much joy as a 10k.
• Create the swim based on your ability and experience. Ensure those joining understand the plan, risks and objectives.