Horrendously cold water swimming

Friday 31st January 2025

It’s still January. I would not be surprised to be tapping the keyboard two months hence and find that we’re still stuck in January.

However, today is the day that we knock it on the head and move into petite flirty little February, the fringe fringe of Spring.

I didn’t go to the beach this morning. The thought of the wet and the remembrance of cold was just too much.

I did swim on Wednesday this week. ‘Swim’ is an optimistic word. I walked into the North Sea, flapped around in the water noisily, moving in an uncomfortable circular route, like a beetle that had fallen into a bucket of cold water.

To look at, the sea was beautiful. At eight a.m we were two hours before the first high tide and a little after sunrise. There was a very light breeze and the beach temperature was around two degrees.

The sea looked like gently rippling pewter and the sky was magnificent, golden egg yolk dripping across the horizon, blue sky patterned with strands of high cottonwool clouds.

The water temperature was five degrees. I remember quipping in this blog back in the autumn that water doesn’t really get cold until it’s under ten degrees.

Fun facts: UK law insists that commercial fridges are set at eight degrees or lower - it’s just cold air, you can wear warm clothes. Cold tap water is around fifteen degrees, don’t complain if it makes your hands cold.

I find five degrees immediately and acutely uncomfortable, quickly prickly and most of all hard to recover from. It’s the rock bottom, the sandy wet bottom perhaps, on the scale that plots North Sea water temperatures through the seasons.

There are a number of websites that show North Sea water temperature. I like the sea fishing ones who are unequivocal about five degrees - and assure me that the fish like it. Others claim that Wednesday’s sea water temperature was six. Take your pick, breathtakingly, chest-squeezingly cold.

Most predict that the water will start to get a degree or two warmer in February and then continue on an uneven but mostly upward path until the summer and the glorious days of early autumn when the sea holds onto the summer warmth. I can barely remember.

It’s never a smooth ascent. Storms churn up the water, bringing cold to the very slightly warmer top. Up the ladder, weather system snake down again.

I beetle out of the sea quickly and very quickly get my dry things on. I return to a hot shower. I feel cold all day and still feel cold in the evening. I’m sure I’m not helped by having days that are occupied sitting still looking at a screen rather than hurrying about getting warm.

The gulls are mad with eating, as if frantically searching for hidden biscuits after a hefty hike.

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