Wet, wild, windy days like today are a pleasant relief at this time of the year, especially on a Sunday. It provides us with a slightly slower, cosier day. A chance for catching up on inside jobs or just spending some quiet time with the children. We try to make Sundays a family day during the summer, but this can be hard to achieve when there is a constant list of work to be done.

However, there are still the animals to feed, vegetables to pick and water come rain or shine, so out into the semi darkness we go, cumbersomely dressed in heavy waterproof clothing, wellies and hats. It will make coming in later, to be in the cosiness of the house, all the lovelier, knowing we have been out in the wild weather.

My swim is a wild one, it is as if winter has returned. The south easterly wind is harsh and strong. The rain sporadically lashes the island and the sea is a tumultuous green grey. Frothy, white rolling waves hurtle their way into Green Bay. A feeling of bubbling excitement grows in my chest and makes me smile, giggle and skip, (if only in my mind) as I strip off my towel and woolly jumper and wade into the swell. The waves lap up against my belly and cause a slight intake of breath before I can dive down and sink into the cool.

There is no clarity today, only hues of opaque green and gold, misted and grainy as the sand is stirred. Even as I dive down toward the seabed I cannot see, I touch the sand before it becomes visible.

The energy of the water is exhilarating and powerful, it is pure pleasure to be swept up into the bubbling swell, to swim through the walls of green waves that roll over me, to be at one with the noise, smell and feel of the water. I really cannot decide which I like best, a calm, clear, summer sea, or the wild, boisterous winter water. Maybe it is best not to try to compare and choose, but to except and enjoy each experience for what it is, and what it gives.

As humans we are hardwired to find the negative, to ensure our survival: we notice and react more strongly to negative experiences than to positive ones. (Nichols W. Blue Mind)

It is possible though to build more positivity into our lives by repeating positive experiences often, and always trying to find the positive in any situation. These experiences don’t have to be huge or life changing on their own, but can be building blocks to being happier.

Today has been another busy day of planting (920 broccoli plants!) making hoops, spud lifting, checking the bees and getting the ponies seen by the farrier. By the time the late afternoon sun is warming the incoming tide over the sand at Great Par, my feet are uncomfortably hot and cramped in my wellie boots. They long to be free of constraint and cool in the water.

Of course the sun is beautiful, the sea mesmerizingly green and clear and the creatures of the underwater world enchanting, but it is the simple pleasure of sinking my hot feet into the grainy sand, for them to be gently massaged by the thousands of tiny stones and to feel that first luxurious cool water flowing in and around my toes, my ankles and my shins, that fills my mind and senses.

Nichols tells us how he has

“a name for the human-water connection: Blue Mind, a mildly meditative state characterized by calm, peacefulness, unity and a sense of general happiness and satisfaction with life in the moment. It is inspired by water and elements associated with water”. (Wallace J. Nichols Blue Mind 2014).

As I swim out into the bay, only in a few feet of that luscious water, I consciously stretch and wriggle my feet and toes, allowing total absorption and mindfulness in how good such a simple act can be. For those few moments I am experiencing those feelings of Blue Mind.

Here’s to that feel good factor and finding simple pleasures in daily life.   

April is our first really busy month of the year, where we could work dawn till dusk day after day if energy levels allowed. There are endless young plants to plant and seeds to sow. We dig and plant mostly by hand, and it is work that stiffens your shoulders and back, but the warm sun and fresh air are deliciously good. The sound of bird song, hum of a passing bee and the occasional aeroplane, boat or lawnmower, the children playing or a faraway baby’s cry are the only indications that another world exists outside of the farm.

My knees sink into the damp dark, sandy soil. Ants and tiny shiny beetles scurry around me. At this time of the year the vegetable fields look nice and neat, conforming to my ideals of tidiness. The young plants are fresh and uniform and the weeds haven’t taken a hold yet. The field edges are thick with wild leek and yellow oxalis.

Have you ever stopped to look at all the colours that surround you?

Today the colours of Bryher are joyous and alive as the sun and clear spring air bring such a brightness and clarity that the colours startle the eye. A hundred shades of green, from the deep, glossy, emerald green and olive and silvered pittisporum to the lime and aloe shades of the succulents, their tips edged with a fiery red. Pale green grey lichen, clinging to speckled grey granite. A lemon yellow dandelion sits next to the white powder puff seed heads of spent flowers. Wild geranium, of deep pink who’s stems are covered in a thousand tiny pink hairs, nestle next to the tall spires of deep blue and purple echium. Fuzzbuzz yellow and black furry bumble bees feed hungrily on them.

At Great Par the rainbow continues with the cornflower blue sky, the glassy green water, the pale golden sand a perfect combination of orange, yellow, white, grey and sparkle. Larger granite pebbles speckled silver, salmon pink, trout grey and mouse brown.

As I swim out towards the middle of the bay, the surface of the water is glittering silver and two shags are silhouettes on the black rocks. Below me a huge copper brown kelp unfurls its arms like the tentacles of a silent octopus. I spy a tiny sand coloured crab scuttling along, the seabed is so dazzling it reminds me of a disco ball, as the sunlight plays on the sand. In the shallows around the rocks a burgundy beadlet anenome with electric blue markings catches my eye.

What a wonderful world of colour we live in!

Today has the feeling of busyness and clock watching. Graham is away on the mainland looking at a potential bull for the farm. I have been delegated the task of a farm tour, my first one, and so my thoughts are preoccupied with this, the various other jobs that need doing, the children and an evening out with the Bryher ladies as we say a farewell to an islander. My mind feels scattered and hurried.

My swim is a quick dash to Great Par, where the evening sun is making a welcome appearance, and glinting brightly on the sea. As I jog in my flip flops and towel, down the road toward the beach, I am reminded of a brief conversation earlier on in the afternoon, with a visitor. She has been reading the blog and told me how wonderful it is to “have a blast of Bryher”. What a great way of describing how this magical island can make you feel.

It is an assault on the senses, whether it is the wind blowing in your face, the sun on your skin, the salty sea air or the oyster catchers calling. The brightness of the bluest of skies, the glassy green seas, the coldness of a wild swim or the warmth of the golden sand. Bryher, and indeed all of nature, has this amazing ability to stop you in your tracks and realign your mind. To bring your thoughts into focus and your mind to a state of calm.

I dive into the sparkling, crystal clear, green water. Each tiny stone, piece of floating seaweed and grain of sand is in brilliantly sharp focus. The sun is blindingly silver bright as it catches the sea in the west, the water a cooling green to the east. I quickly swim out to the second buoy, take a few dives down towards the seabed, momentarily captured in another world. I would stay longer to swim and play but time waits for no man, and reluctantly I head back to the shore.

Not a meditative swim but a definite blast of beautiful Bryher.

It has been raining heavily overnight and the morning is grey and damp, I hope it clears for planting later. I creep out of the sleepy farmhouse, leave it quiet and still. The island feels the same, in Sunday morning slumber. Its 6:45 and it seems late to me but the change in the clocks has brought the darkness back into morning and the inky blue blackness is just fading into grey.

A silent walk along the sandy track of Veronica farm, the rhythmic slap, slap of the gentle waves to my right and the chirping of invisible birds all around.

As I reach Quay, two fishermen are setting off for a day’s work on the waves. Dressed in yellow oilskins, wellies and woolly hat, tubs full of pungent fish bait, ready to be put into the lobster pots and sunk into the depths. The familiar chug and pop of the boat engines, a comforting island sound. I know one day when I am far from my life on Bryher, I may hear a sound like it, and memories of Bryher and early morning swims will flood back into my mind, as the tide floods into the shore.

Two honking geese fly overhead toward Tresco, and then I am once more alone in the early morning light and the high tide calls me in. The rushes that edge the sandy bank at the top of the beach, and act as a sea defence for the tiny road, wave golden green in the easterly breeze. Oyster thief line the high tide mark, little green brown bubbles, all fat and puffed with air.

The water feels cold and my forehead freezes as I dive into the shallows and rapidly swim out into the bay. I am caught in an icy clamp, my skin pricking, my fingers and toes pinched, until my body adjusts, and then the freedom and exhilaration begins.

The sea is choppy, and waves slap and buffet me, a few hit the soft underside of my arms and break across my face. It is hard to find a rhythm to the stroke and often my nostrils and mouth are filled with the chilled saline. But it is beautiful and fun and I emerge back onto the soft rippled sand sated and refreshed.

The island still feels sleepy as Sundays often do, but I am looking forward to feeding the animals, picking the vegetables and digging the first early potatoes of the year, maybe an early Easter egg hunt with the children. I hope your sleepy Sunday has been fun too.

In my week away from the islands lots on Bryher has changed. The new road has been finished, a gate has been painted blue, small motor boats are re-appearing on their moorings and kayaks sit at the top of the beach.

Along the hedges and banks large clumps of purple geranium and scented pinks are looking bonnie, the white flowered tri-cornered leeks are so thickly spread it is as if snow has fallen.

The flowers may think spring has sprung but the weather does not! A very cold south easterly wind drives the high tide up onto the seaweed strewn, granite pebbles that lay along the top of Green Bay. The sky is thick with grey clouds and spits of rain chill my skin each time they hit.

From a distance the sea looked steely blue, but now I am stood at the water’s edge it is its familiar hue of green glass and turquoise .

The water is warmer than the air and it is a pleasure to be engulfed by my old salty friend. Visibility is poor as the sea churns the seabed up into the wash, I can barely see my hands before me. I am effortlessly lifted up and let down as wave after wave sweeps towards the beach, some I swim through as a seal might do.

As I turn to swim back to the shore, the cool evening silver sun in the west, throws its dazzling light onto the choppy water and it bounces and dances, I stare in wonder at such a lovely sight, a cosy feeling in my heart that I am home.

Bryher seems far, far away. Another world that I have left behind for a few days to return to the mainland. Here though, on the edge of Dartmoor, are new opportunities to seek wild swimming of a different kind. Rivers! Rivers of wonderful clarity and life, rivers of tumbling waters and shaded pools.

As my Mum and I walk down through great woodlands of oak and beech, their dead leaves crunching underfoot into the deep humus, she tells me of when, as a twelve-year-old girl, she and her school friends would walk out from Tavistock into the woods and down to the river Walkham, to swim in the Walkham Pool.

This is a tale of my mother’s childhood that has never been told to me and I love the idea that I can swim in the same wild waters as she had. So we make our way through the dappled light and shade. The River Walkham running alongside us, on its journey from its head, high up in the wilds of Dartmoor. Down through the steep valleys, topped by the beautifully bleak granite of Great Miss Tor, Roos Tor and Great Staple Tor. Past the remains of tin mines and quarries that were once the working heart of the moors. Through villages and farmland and onto Plymouth, where it meets the sea on the south coast of Devon.

We arrive at the pool, a short stretch of river, about fifteen meters long, with a small waterfall at either end and surrounded by trees that arc over the water’s surface. The bare branches, send out vein-like shadows along the ground which is covered in gnarled roots and damp mossy banks.

The river is loud. Water rushing and gurgling over the rocks, plunging into the deep pools below. Carefully I step down to the edge of the bank, over the slate like stone which is covered in an orange ore-like sludge, seeping out from the earth. It is slimy and slippery underfoot. The shelf of stone creates a perfect platform into the deep pool, a place to sit momentarily before casting out into the bottle green water. The cold catches my breath ever so slightly but it feels warmer than the sea, and silky smooth, no salt in my nostrils and on my skin.

I breaststroke against the current towards the small waterfall at the top end. The noise grows louder and the water becomes fizzy and bubbling like a bottle of shaken up champagne. It tickles my skin and I can’t prevent the widest grin from lighting my face.

The air smells of earth, damp leaves and cool freshness. The quick water flows dark and smooth over hidden rocks, thickly covered in saturated moss.  I turn and glide, a free rider in the flow. Three times more I turn and swim upstream and float down, Buddy, our dog, plunges in and swims and plays too.

An image of my Mum as a young girl, leaping and swimming and enjoying such freedom and fun in this same spot is in my mind. It also reminds me of an afternoon when I was quite young, when, with family friends we swam and played in the same river further up the valley. Even now I can remember the cold, the bubbles and the thrill of being in the water.

How magic these rivers are. For generations of people they have provided beauty, coolness, and fun. Whether you walk alongside them or swim within them, and they will continue to do so for generations to come.

5:30 am

The moonlight brought me from slumber, so bright my mind thought it was daylight. It is just dawn but the moon still rules the skies, for a moment or two anyway. The sky to the east is quickly fading from lilac to a peachy glow.

Moon Gazey swims

Lynne Ropers moon gazey swims;

“We call them Moon Gazey swims after moon gazey hares, who sit mesmerised by the full moon. There’s also the famous Star Gazey Pie, traditional in Cornwall where the heads of the pilchards rise above the pastry, like wild swimmers scoffing their way out of a giant cake.”

My early morning swim is not quite a Moon Gazey swim, but pretty magical and mesmerising all the same. There is only nature. Gulls, curlews, shags and oyster catchers join the dawn chorus of starlings, blackbirds and sparrows.

The sea is perfectly quiet, every few seconds the incoming tide laps lazily onto the shoreline. My footprints are the first on the damp sand, and they sink deep into its soft coolness.

I love the dawn, have always been a lark, not an owl, and get a sense of bubbly excitement in this special first light. I feel like I could be the only human on the planet. That would be terribly sad and lonesome, but for a few moments in this surreal time between the world of night and day, it is a wonderful feeling.

A plane streaks across the sky like a golden arrow shot from space, leaving behind it a trail of sunlit vapour.

As I walk into the sea, the water has no colour, just glass-like clarity. Not until I dive down into the water does it reveal its other worldly colours of greens and blues. I swim in the shallows and two startled crabs stand to attention, up on their tip toes, fighting claws reaching up, before scuttling off across the seabed. My fingers and toes are pinched with cold but I am warmed by the pleasure of the swim.

As I wade out of the sea, the moon is fading and the golden orb of sun bursts across the channel above the Tresco horizon.  

Tomorrow I am returning to the mainland for a few days and I feel a sense of loss as I say farewell to the sea, as you would when saying farewell to an old friend. My last swim for a while and I know I will be longing to return.

Calm, Calm, radiant sunshine fills the sky and warms the air, and its only 7:30…. what a day it’s going to be. We have been up since dawn and fed the animals, Martha and I are down at the quay waiting for the school boat, but we are early so she plays on the beach whilst I go for a quick swim.

The chug, chug, chug of a fishing boat is a pleasing sound as it sits alongside the quay, the fisherman, clad in yellow oilskins, loads up his lobster pots. The sun glints off the roofs over on Tresco.

The cool water is perfectly still like glass, and satiny smooth around my skin. Sun beams dance and ripple over the sandy seabed. The water is so clear I can pick out individual grains of sand. I swim out towards the channel, no current pulls me today, and I can just stay, suspended in the sea, my eyes at sea level, taking in this beautiful world. I tumble turn, effortlessly rolling through silver bubbles, bright blue and green colours. I can see Martha playing on the beach, investigating sand hopper burrows and flotsam and jetsam washed up.  

Another fishing boat heads out to sea for a day’s work, more children arrive for the school boat so I must end my swim and say cheerio to Martha. It feels as if the world is awakening to a glorious day.  I hope your day is glorious too.