M0nica
keepingquiet
M0nica
Sea swimming is rarely described as 'wild' swimming. no one going on holiday in warm weather to paddle with children is going to call it wild swimming, and I am not sure that any of those swimming in the sea at Christmas would describe it as wild swimming. In fact most of those on beaches in the aftermath of Christmas actually swim. The majority walk into the water up to about their waists and then retreat.
Originally 'wild' swimming meant swimming in natural waters like rivers, lakes etc inland at a time when HSE and other authorities reacted as if to swim anywhere other than a nice chlorinated pool was to risk death ot a life time of disease and disablement.
I can remember the first 'wild' swimmers wrote books about their exciting discovery of swimming in natural waters and the difficulties they had being allowed to do so. The term 'wild' was used to differentiate it from the 'domesticated' swimming done in a man made heated pool.
Looking back it seems incredible that at one stage we became so bureaucratically namby pamby, that swimming in rivers and lakes. Things most of us did as children as a normal activity should have been so tideid away and banned that when someone started doing it again, they faced the opposition they did and had to give it a new name to seperate it from pool swimming, which is what most people have only experienced (except on the beach in summer)
Oh come off it MOnica!
People have always swum in those places but they didn't write books about it!
Not everyone lived near the sea or could even access a municipal swimming baths.
In summer lots of people went for a swim in the local res and rivers etc...
Yes of course they did, but in my children's childhoods (1970 to around 2000), it was actively discouraged. Swimmers were banned from swimming in many previously widely used swimming areas in rivers and pools, DH had swum in his local river with most of the rest of the small town he was born and brought up in. By the time we had children it was closed. The usual reasons given were polluted waters, dangers of disease, weed growth and half a dozen other reasons.
I suspect the real reason was, with swimming pools being built in every town, town councils wanted people paying to use their nice new pools to cover the cost of building and running them. River and lake swimming was free, so needed to be discouraged. My children spent much of their childhood in an area riddled with gravel pits and rivers. I cannot remember there being any being open tfor swimmers. It was all Danger signs and 'Trespassers will be prosecuted'.
However when DC were still paddlers I did know a quiet place on our local river. It was down a footpath and had a nice gravelly 'beach'. We would wander down there in hot weather and set up camp by the river, with a snack and drinks. had we been seen by anyone official, we would have been sent about our business and I would have been warned abut putting my children in danger. It happened to others.
Earlier in the thread I made a point about the difference between adults choosing to swim in unlicensed places, and children.
If children cannot swim then any water is dangerous for them and children don't go 'wild swimming' in the context we are discussing here. This is an adult pre-occupation.
It was the Voctorians who for the most part opened public baths, not just for swimming but for people who needed to simply keep clean. When I was young my local Victorian built pool had things called 'slipper baths' where you could go to take a bath before everyone had running water or even other than a tin bath that had to be hand-filled and emptied.
Maybe later in the 20th century a lot of these old swimming baths were closed, knocked down, re-purposed or refurbished and some councils invested in leisure pools.
Yes, children still put themselves in danger or are even encouraged to do so by irresponsible parents- but that is a different topic altogether.
