I'm not a good swimmer, but I can swim in cold water. When I lived in London, our block in Streatham (originally built in the 1930s) had a full-sized pool. Possibly it was heated in the 1930s, but not when we were there. There's something irresistible about waking on a summer morning, thinking "I'll have a swim before I go to work", and just trotting downstairs, doing a few lengths, then coming up for a shower and breakfast. Just about the only thing that ever made me want to get up half an hour early. I often swam again when I got home in the evening, before dinner. I was probably never so fit in all my life. Then they had to shut the pool because we couldn't afford the maintenance any more, and anyway I had a longer journey to work so couldn't have fitted it in except at weekends.
But I did used to stick with it into the early autumn, when it was really getting quite chilly. The consequence is that when I go to France in the summer, where it's usually pretty hot but the river's usually pretty cold, I can wade straight in and start swimming while my friends, who are much stronger swimmers, are still standing on the bank dipping their toes in and gasping. It takes me only a few strokes to dispel the cold.
I'm not a fun swimmer, though. I don't like having other people in my vicinity, because I'm afraid of bumping into them, I hate splashing, and I'm afraid of getting my face wet. I just like swimming my lengths in a pool, or swimming set distances in the river; over the week, I work up from "round the island" to "as far as the bridge", and then concentrate on reducing the number of strokes I take "to the bridge and back".
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But I did used to stick with it into the early autumn, when it was really getting quite chilly. The consequence is that when I go to France in the summer, where it's usually pretty hot but the river's usually pretty cold, I can wade straight in and start swimming while my friends, who are much stronger swimmers, are still standing on the bank dipping their toes in and gasping. It takes me only a few strokes to dispel the cold.
I'm not a fun swimmer, though. I don't like having other people in my vicinity, because I'm afraid of bumping into them, I hate splashing, and I'm afraid of getting my face wet. I just like swimming my lengths in a pool, or swimming set distances in the river; over the week, I work up from "round the island" to "as far as the bridge", and then concentrate on reducing the number of strokes I take "to the bridge and back".