Outdoor swims: Save swimming at Grantchester Meadows

The River Cam just outside Cambridge at Grantchester Meadows is one of the places that has kept us sane through the Covid-19 pandemic. We have swum there in all conditions, from blazing sunshine to hail storms, sometimes with just swans for company, sometimes with the banks crowded with families and groups of young people - though rarely with more than a handful of swimmers and paddleboarders.

 

Now it seems that the landowners, Kings College, have decided to ban swimmers entering the river from Grantchester Meadows as well as launching boats, kayaks or paddle boards. In a statement they have cited concerns about large gatherings, antisocial behaviour, safety and erosion of riverbanks. No doubt during lockdown with so much closed down places like Grantchester Meadows have been busier than normal, but this probably temporary phenomenon is no reason to deny many people their right to enjoy the river.  

To anybody with experience of urban life the alleged antisocial behaviour sounds rather tame - apparently some people have been abandoning their punctured boats, in any case no doubt already covered by existing rules against dumping rubbish. In all our visits we have never seen anything more rowdy than a group of kids turning up on bikes jumping in the river and splashing about for a few minutes - and why shouldn't they? I doubt if the alleged drinking and drug taking is any more serious than in a typical gathering of Kings College students.

The river here is surely one of the most famous spots for wild swimming in England, associated as it is with the poet Rupert Brooke splashing about with various literary luminaries.  As Charles Sprawson describes in his great swimming history 'Haunts of the Black Masseur', Brooke became 'the centre of a circle of swimming friends, those “flower-crowned laughing swimmers” [a line from Brooke poem]. Virginia Woolf remarked that under his influence the country near Cambridge was full of young men and women walking barefoot sharing his passion for bathing and fish diet. When temporarily smitten by Brooke, Rose Macauley swam naked with him in Grantchester just as Virginia Woolf had done'. Brooke used to canoe from Kings College to Grantchester as well as swimming. Just upstream Byron's Pool, sadly no longer swimmable, is named after the poet who swam there. 

But as Roger Deakin, a sometime Cambridge student, remarks in 'Waterlog: a swimmer's journey through Britain' this waterway is 'the People's River' as popular with the town as with the gown.  He mentions for instance local shoemaker and later novelist Jack Overhill who famously swam there every day for more than sixty years up until the early 1980s, with the Granta Swimming Club he founded in 1934 holding races there in all weathers.

Deakin's famous swimming journey through Britain naturally included a swim here: 'I entered the river instead from just below the village, at the bend where there is a gently shelving beach of gravel and bits of old brick. From here, I drifted downriver all through the meadows, by pollard willows in a row down the far bank, overtaken by the occasional punt. Tractors worked the flat fields and lovers walked in the Meadows or lay together on the bank'.

As Deakin himself remarked after a clash with college landowners elsewhere (Winchester) - 'But surely we should all have access to swim in our rivers just as we should be free to walk in our own countryside. Don't they belong to all of us?'

Thousands have already signed a petition  to 'Keep access to the river at Grantchester Meadows open to all'. They say:  'Whilst the land is owned by the college, it has been an asset of community value for over 500 years. Public use of the meadows for swimming, canoeing and punting has in living memory always been enjoyed by the people of Cambridge as it is one of the greatest areas of natural beauty lying within easy reach for city residents... The closure would deny new generations the sense of well-being and enjoyment derived from the river at the only accessible spot where you can swim away from traffic and infrastructure'. Nature writer and Cambridge academic Robert Macfarlane is among those supporting this campaign.

This is an issue not just for Cambridge but for the wider swimming and outdoor water sports communities. With a general trend towards greater access to wild places, private landowners cannot be allowed to unilaterally make decisions like this.  If an army of “flower-crowned laughing swimmers” is needed to defy this, count us in.

Here's a beautiful song about Grantchester Meadows written by Pink Floyd in 1969: 'a river of green is sliding, Unseen beneath the trees, Laughing as it passes, Through the endless summer, Making for the sea, In the lazy water meadow I lay me down, All around me golden sunflakes settle on the ground'

Update, 11 July 2021

More than 18,000 people have now signed the petition against the ban, and Kings College has indicated that it is reviewing its policy. It has said it will not be prosecuting anybody swimming 'responsibly'. A spoof letter was placed on a sign in the Meadows last weekend saying '“Dear peasants, It has come to our attention that large numbers of people have been using our land for meeting, swimming and enjoying themselves without increasing our large financial reserves; improving our research output or providing their offspring to serve at high table'. 

Many swimmers have been ignoring the ban and swimming as normal. Yesterday (Saturday 10th April 2021) local activists from the Cambridge branch of ACORN, the community and tenants' union, staged a protest swim. In any event, a couple of hundred swimmers took part in the organised Slow Swimming event there yesterday, seemingly with the approval of the College as they had public liability insurance and lifeguards. It does seem that insurance/liability is at the heart of this issue. As more people take the plunge to outdoor swimming landowners seem to be becoming very anxious about being seen to condone it and therefore potentially held to account when, as sometimes happens, somebody comes to harm. We need a wider discussion about how to make swimming as safe as it can be while also allowing people to make informed decisions for themselves about the risks they are prepared to take - no physical activity, and certainly no outdoor swimming, is risk free.