An Autumn of swim-along interviews 🍂

From September through to November, I met over twenty-five Thames swimmers, sharing autumnal swims together come rain or shine. My interviewees have taken me as far upriver as Lechlade, a small Cotswolds town just over twenty miles from the source, and as far downriver as Canvey Island, a waterside community in Essex. The map below pinpoints the locations of swim-along interviews. Whilst waters changed from fresh to salty and leaves turned evermore golden, the joy of sharing swims - and of course coffee and cake - remained a constant. As we swam together, we discussed an array of topics including why people choose to swim in the Thames, what might prevent them from doing so, and what they love about their specific swim spot. Swimmers, water, weather, and my own swimming abilities always shape these interviews, deciding how long we swim for, how much discussion is possible, and whether we want to hang about on the riverbank post-swim.

I have been using a GoPro to record these shared experiences, providing me with over six hours of video data. The below stills are captured from four of these swim-along interviews in four different locations: Pinkhill (Oxfordshire), Ham (London), Royal Docks (London), Thorney Bay (Essex). As these stills demonstrate, the Thames completely transforms over this journey - for some river swimmers swimming in the Thames means journeying through a cosy tree-lined avenue, for others it means bobbing in a tidal expanse. In the video footage, we meet coots and cormorants, paddleboarders and dog walkers, kingfishers and herons, and even a black swan. We hear swimmers gasping, laughing and groaning, dogs barking, mud squelching and sand crunching - and of course, always, water lapping and splashing.

These Autumn interviews are only the beginning. The folder of swimming footage on my laptop only continues to grow. I have recently begun the Winter phase of my fieldwork, returning to those who swim and dip throughout the year to explore how their swimming practices evolve over the seasons. Swim-along interviews certainly become more challenging in these colder months when the sharpness of the water can threaten to numb not only my fingers but also my mind. It can also be trickier to enter the water when heavy rains can mean negotiating untreated sewage and surface run-off or dangerous flows and floods. However, we are still swimming and talking together where and when we can - when we can't I am asking swimmers to meet besides the water.

It is truly exciting to be reuniting with the river swimmers who are at the heart of this project and I am incredibly grateful for the time and swimspots they share with me. If you too are a Thames swimmer and are keen to join the project, please reach out via the page on this website. It is not too late to participate and you do not have to be a year round swimmer to be involved.