THE SOCIAL EXPERIENCE
"But really it's a solo activity where the community is the other people who happen to be there that day."
All my participants emphasised the swim itself in the winter as a predominantly solo experience: “getting in the water is just so about your relationship with yourself”. However, all also spoke about the community feeling among of those that happen to be at the pond at the same time, sharing the desire to do something that many people find alien, a very important part of the experience.
"It's like sort of two hours a week that I just think is for me"
All participants also spoke about the journey to the pond - particularly the walk across the heath - as an undisturbed solo experience. Some would switch their phones off or leave them at home to make the time feel very uninterrupted; one would ask their partner not to text them. Swimming alone meant being able to fully immersed in the experience - one participant reflected that the sensory experience is very different when swimming with friends, as they concentrated more on listening and on chatting than immersing themselves more fully in the atmosphere of the ponds. Another observed that their usual ritual and routine around swimming - having a specific hook in the changing rooms, getting hot water in a bucket for their feet - was disrupted when swimming with friends, making it a different experience. When swimming alone, the experience for participants was for themselves and no one else - something that I explore in my findings around sharing digitally at the pond.
"Most of the time I’ll go alone… but I find the atmosphere at the pond in winter quite social… it does feel like I go and I get to be around other people."
But the solitude of the swim itself and choosing to go alone to the ponds does not mean it isn't a social experience. All swimmers spoke of the community feeling of being at the pond with others all there for the same reason as you, many swimming alone but ready to interact with those that happened to be there. These included small interactions around gear, around the water, around the heat of the showers - these social elements were actually very welcome around the swim itself. Participants spoke of the fact that even if they didn’t have a conversation with the other swimmers there, there always felt like there was a camaraderie, a shared experience that existed beyond the individual, that they enjoyed the buzz and the chat even if they didn’t participate. "Smugness" again came up here - the feeling of being part of a small community of like-minded people partaking in a niche activity.
“There's women of different ages, who are all just there to be in the cold water.”
All of my participants highlighted the age range at the pond, and how they enjoyed being in a multi-generational space and be in contact with older women that is rare in other areas of their lives. Something that came up repeatedly was the normalization of nudity at the ponds - the easy nature of stripping off in front of a multi-generational group and nakedness being the norm, how it felt empowering to not feel self conscious or looked at in that space - "we're here to swim". (Although this didn't hold true for one of my participants, who always changed in one of the toilet cubicles.)
“I really like it when I go and have a random natter with other women in the changing room. It doesn't happen every time. But when it does, it's really nice.”
Despite the emphasis and enjoyment of swimming solitude, participants did speak about sharing the experience with friends being rewarding. One who started swimming in lockdown alone spoke about beginning to swim with others as a great joy of restrictions easing after the first lockdown in 2020, being able to share an experience that they really valued with those closest to them. However they were glad to have begun the activity solo, having realised how much they enjoyed it - doing it only of their own accord and not for anyone else, and only sharing it with others by the time it had solidified as an interest and something they did for themselves alone.
“I think there is something really nice about the the shared thrill of that experience… there's something about a shared mild adversity that can bond people and bring them together.”
So for my participants, winter swimming at the ponds was primarily a solo activity, but surrounded by social interaction of the community built within the space. There seemed a symbiosis between the solitude of the practice, and the desire to share the experience with others to whom participants were connected only through a shared love of the ponds in the winter, and proximity within the space itself. This social connection was not one where you would have each others numbers, or your relationships expanded beyond the reach of the pond itself, but a community united by a shared love of something, and social relationships confined to a specific space. This is emphasised by how my participants felt this this changes with the changes of the ponds’ users in the summer months, and by participants' reticence to broadcast their experiences digitally beyond small groups of like-minded people - both of which I touch on in other sections.