Meet the ‘winter mermaids’ who have been cold water swimming during lockdown

It’s three below freezing outside and there’s actual snow on the pebbles but the sea looks calm, its grey-green hue defying its 8C temperature. I’m not the only crazy here.

I wave to at least nine other ruddy-cheeked women crunching along the snowy shore in their Dryrobe, the huge mac/towelling robe that’s become the unofficial uniform of the Brighton sea-swimmer.

They are my sisterhood of the sea. We might not chat much but it’s good to know we look out for each other.

Before I can overthink it, I find my usual spot, drop my tatty tracksuit bottoms, pull on a pair of neoprene booties and shimmy off my Dryrobe to reveal a lard-white, goose-bumped body clad in only a bikini.

Usually a fair-weather swimmer, since the first lockdown I’ve gone full mermaid and now swim in the sea three or four times a week, whatever the weather.

The sea is at its coldest during February and March but this doesn’t seem to have put off the dozens who flock to Brighton beach every morning.

‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ says Lynette Slight from the Brighton Swimming Club. ‘Most winters it’s just us out there but this year I’ve seen so many more swimmers about.’

Some of my fellow seabirds wear woolly hats, others are encased in wetsuits but the majority swim in ‘skins’ (the fancy word for wearing normal bathers).

In the water, a flurry of snow whips around my ears as I paddle a swift breaststroke to warm up.

Snowflakes gently melting on my nose, I swim out further towards the horizon, a watery sun hovering just above it, and think of nothing bar being in the beautiful, briny sea.

Growing up in Guernsey, fellow winter mermaid Georgina Burrows has always swum regularly in the sea.

‘It’s something I regard as just as essential to my well-being as eating or breathing,’ she says. ‘There’s very little a swim can’t solve or at least help.’

Indeed, my icy dips have been the saving of me during the pandemic and I’m not the only one: the National Open Water Coaching Association reported a 323% rise in open-water swimmers in the past year.

In 2018, the British Medical Journal published a report about using cold-water swimming as a treatment for depression, as it puts our bodies into fight-or-flight mode and helps us better adapt to stress.

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