Return to Burton Bradstock

I last visited Burton Bradstock two years ago with Emily and our friends Joe and Keeley. Joe is a journalist and keeps a wild swimming blog, where he follows in the footsteps of his hero Roger Deakin and ‘re-swims’ the entire of Waterlog. Our first trip to Burton Bradstock featured in one of Joe’s early entries and captured my favourite day of the year.

 Emily and I return on a warm and bright day at the start of October, towards the end of our Indian summer. Although early on a Sunday morning, the beach is packed with strollers, and customers throng the Hive Beach Café. I waste no time getting my clothes off while Emily protects my dignity with a well-placed towel. She watches on the beach and takes photos while I have my moment in the water.

The day before in a bookshop in Bridport, the owner told me that she had been swimming the day before and it had been warm. She is not wrong. I wade into the sea with confidence and the sand soon shelves down so I am up to my waste. A wave crashes over me and I am submerged and swimming.

When we visited before, I remember being overwhelmed by the beauty of the stretching headland and the curve of the coast. Joe and I swam in small circles so as not to go out of our depths and we talked of being ‘in’ nature. Today my thoughts are morbid. I feel the pull of the sea and the ferocity of the waves and the feeling of being ‘in’ nature is humbling rather than empowering. If the sea chose to take me I would have no choice but to let it.

As a gigantic wave comes over me, I am pushed forwards and into the grasp of the sea in a manner reminiscent of the famous dolly zoom in Jaws when Officer Brody first sees the shark. I imagine drowning. I imagine Joe hearing the news of my lifeless body being washed up on the Dorset coast and swearing off swimming for good, leaving his blog unfinished. He writes a book, but not on his search for transcendence through swimming and instead on his search for closure in his grievance as he works towards returning to the water. In the final chapter, Joe too goes back to Burton Bradstock with friends and family and they all join hands in the water…  

… to be honest, I didn’t get that far in thinking about it. I see Emily on the beach waving at me and I swim back to shore.  I leave the sea behind, exhilarated and glowing. As I towel off, Emily, tells me that I was very far out and that she was beginning to worry. I tell her about my morbid thoughts and about Joe swearing off swimming. Emily gives me a funny look.

“So, you’re saying that if you drowned, the worst thing about it would be that Joe couldn’t finish his blog?” she says.

Before leaving, I take a few pictures of the rowing boats that have been left on the beach: I am taken by their shape, the colour of their cracked paint and the texture of their ropes.