It can be a highly addictive activity; you get that rush of endorphins and the wellbeing aspect is huge.
I moved to Sheffield about ten years ago for university. Before that I was in Swansea, where I’d spend a lot of time swimming in the sea. I was already quite an outdoorsy person; I had discovered rock climbing just before moving here and continued that when I arrived. I remember one of the first things I did as a fresher was cycle out at night to the Peak District while everyone else was getting trashed in halls of residence.
In terms of wild swimming, there wasn’t anywhere that well known back then, apart from Slippery Stones really. I had joined a wild swimming Facebook group based in Leeds called FLOWS (Fabulous Leeds Outdoor Wild Swimmers) and saw they were visiting some of the reservoirs around the north of Sheffield – places like Penistone, where I was living at the time – and cautiously began swimming in those. I also started going to Crookes Valley Park and began wondering why others didn’t seem to swim there. I’d watched it for a while and it had all the signs it was clean, so I started swimming there and set up a Facebook group in 2016.
Owen Hayman, founder of Sheffield Outdoor Plungers.
The idea was to create a local group where people who shared an interest in wild swimming could meet and discuss locations, maybe go on swims together. I felt like I had discovered something and wanted to share it. I worked at Sheffield University so would often go for a lunchtime swim during the summer and pop back into work. It’s a very refreshing thing to do. There’d be different groups who started turning up at different times to fit around their daily routines – the morning group, the 1pm gang, the post-work swimmers – it quickly became quite popular.
There are a few well-known wild swimming locations around Sheffield these days: Crookes Valley Park, Slippery Stones, the Rivelin Valley plunge pool. It can be a highly addictive activity; you get that rush of endorphins and the wellbeing aspect is huge. People with certain physical and mental health conditions can actually find quite life-changing effects from wild swimming. There’s a lot of science around it, and of course a big social side too – Sheffield SOUP is one of the biggest local swimming Facebook groups in the UK.
“I felt like I had discovered something and wanted to share it.”
I think part of that is because we always wanted it to be as welcoming as possible; it’s very much a ‘more the merrier’ attitude. People might wonder how something as inoffensive as swimming could be political, but wild swimming is wrapped up in two big things: access and environmental impact. I’d argue it has a positive environmental impact as it engages people with issues surrounding our rivers, particularly the pollution problems they’re currently facing. If you’re swimming in them, you’re going to positively engage in that debate.
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