- 5 months ago
The past, present and future of swimming in Morecambe Bay, as told by five people.
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00:00Hello, I'm John and I'm the founding member of the Mallows Open Water Swimming Group.
00:05The reason we're making this film really was to capture some history,
00:10people's stories from the past and to leave stories for people in the future.
00:15Years ago through the group I met somebody called Raymond Holmes who's actually in this film
00:20and he told me a story about swimming across Morecambe Bay when he was younger and winning a race.
00:27I loved listening to his story and I thought that that story should be captured somewhere and recorded for other people to hear.
00:36And years later I met a guy called Charlie who's also in this film
00:41and he told me stories about when he piloted people across the bay on swims
00:46and some of his adventures and how he got to know about the bay.
00:50And again his story I thought needed recording and putting down.
00:56And then people who are in our group now, I thought if we interview them one day what they say will be history
01:04and we can pass on for people in the future about the swims we're doing now.
01:08So that's why we're making this film really to capture a little piece of history of swimming in Morecambe Bay.
01:23Thank you so much.
01:25Take care.
01:26We're very well.
01:57I started the Mallows route in 2017.
02:10Out of necessity really, I'd been swimming alone for a couple of years in the Rebelline.
02:16I never felt like I had the nerve to swim very far, although that's what I wanted to do.
02:22So I looked into, were there any groups locally?
02:26I couldn't find any.
02:28People had started to tell me swimming along was a bit irresponsible.
02:32So I formed a group.
02:35In the early days, it was very slow to get moving.
02:38I think the problem I had in the beginning was I didn't have any experience myself to offer other people who came to the group.
02:47So it pushed me really to look into lots of different terrain spots, find out about, you know, what the conditions would be in different weathers, and just do research so I could pass something on.
03:01The thought of running a group didn't appeal to me very much.
03:09It was only to find other people to swim with for me, really.
03:13Make a few friends, people I could tag along with, and learn something about open water swimming.
03:19But as the group grew to 50, 100 members, I realised I was going to have to do some work in running the group, adding new members.
03:29And I slowly warmed to the role of running a group, but I do feel a lot happy just being in the background and swimming.
03:40The first swims I did were in the River Loon, and it felt for a while that that's where it would be, mainly.
03:47I got quite happy swimming in the River Loon.
03:49But as I walked up and down the promenade in Wacombe, I started to think about the possibility of swimming in the sea.
03:57The only issue I had is everybody I asked said you couldn't do it as it was too dangerous.
04:03But when I asked further questions, they didn't really know why it was dangerous.
04:08I'd never seen anybody else swimming in the sea, which half confirmed what they said.
04:15One day, I was driving down the seafront with my son in the car.
04:21I think he was probably three years old.
04:24When I saw three men swimming in the sea, just where I'd wanted to swim myself.
04:31So, I quickly steered the car into the car fire, and said that I had to go and talk to these people.
04:38They weren't as friendly as I'd hoped, and they just said they were training for something.
04:42One of the men, however, did tell me the sort of timing you need to swim in the sea regarding tides.
04:51And armed with that little bit of information, I felt like I could at least get in and give it a try.
04:58So, the very next day, I got in the sea.
05:02Didn't particularly like it, if I'm honest.
05:05Swallowed quite a lot of the water, which made me feel sick and felt seasick for some days after.
05:11But over the coming months, that dropped off, and I felt a lot more comfortable in the sea.
05:19To the point where I just felt, I suppose, at home in the sea, and it became a favourite place to swim.
05:26And slowly but surely, people did start joining me on swings, which made me feel a little bit safer, more confident in the water.
05:35And then, over time, after we'd swam in this small bay that we now call Mallow's Bay,
05:43a few of us started to look out into other places up and down the coast of Morkan Bay,
05:49the possibility of longer swings.
05:52Again, people said it was too dangerous, but we went off and did our own research.
05:58We'd plant ourselves in different parts of the bay, where it was quite shallow.
06:05And just, we'd experiment to see what would happen when we got in these different places,
06:11how the water would move us.
06:14And then we started to join all these locations together and do longer swims up and down the bay.
06:21Up until recently, I have been doing research on swimming in Morkan Bay,
06:36and the only history I could find online was about cross-bay swimmers from Grange to Morkan.
06:43I think these started in the early 1900s, when they would have had fishermen piloting swimmers across the bay.
06:51Other than that, there wasn't much that I could find about organized swimming closer in it to Morkan.
06:58And I did think that, apart from the odd swimmers scattered around, there had never been a formal break like ours.
07:07But recently, somebody gave us a scrapbook, which is full of history and pictures and cuttings
07:15that date back to the early 1950s.
07:19And we found that there was a club around here called Morkan and Hisham in Choswook Hub
07:25that organized lots of swims and events.
07:28I think it was mainly for people who couldn't manage the full distance of the cross-bay swim.
07:34And it's been amazing to see all this history written down and in picture form.
07:42And these people would have been swimming in Morkan Bay with very little equipment and probably a small wooden safety boat piloting them.
07:51And people were coming from far and wide swimming in Morkan from all over the northwest, Yorkshire, Manchester.
07:59And in this scrapbook, we found the story of a man who'd swam from Lancaster to Morkan,
08:05from the quay all the way down to Glessel Dock, up to the stone jetty in Morkan.
08:11He was called Kendall Mellor, and just doing research, I tried to find out if this man was still alive, possibly to interview him.
08:20Sadly, he's no longer with us, but I did get a chance to talk to his daughter.
08:25And she told me that he loved swimming in Morkan and coming up here.
08:30And he's one of many people who've contributed to the history of swimming in Morkan Bay.
08:35It can be quite serious swimming outside and doing long distances, and you have to do lots of training and preparation.
08:49But there are fun times as well when it's good to just have a bit of fun and not take it too seriously.
08:57In the beginning when I started, I was training for a mile event in Windermere that somebody had told me about.
09:05And I'd been told by various people that it's not like swimming in a pool, and, you know, you need to get used to swimming in a wetsuit.
09:14So I'd bought a wetsuit online, I'd never put one on before, and my partner Lisa had said,
09:20don't go in the river by yourself with it, and wait till I get on from work and we'll go together.
09:26But I'm usually quite restless, and I don't always listen to other people.
09:31So I went down to the river with the wetsuit.
09:34I tried and tried to put it on, and I kept falling over and failing miserably.
09:39And I couldn't zip the back up, which I found extremely difficult, it must have looked like I was doing some strange form of yoga.
09:49But in the end I resigned myself that I wasn't going to zip the back up, and how important could it be?
09:55So I sat on the riverbank, I dipped my feet in the water, sunk up to my knees in the water, started to panic, and dived forward.
10:05And all I could see is bubbles, the water was very peaty and brown, you know, nothing like a swimming pool.
10:13And panic set in, quickly turned around and got out, sunk up to my knees in running air, and pulled myself out up to the riverbank.
10:22And it's at that point when I realised this event that I'd edited into was going to be a lot more difficult than I'd imagined.
10:31And I started to think, why have I signed up for it?
10:34But that seems to be the story of a lot of events I have signed up for, is you do the preparation, but there's always some sort of anxiety around,
10:45will you be able to swim the distance, can you do it, last minute nerves.
10:50I'm sure lots of other people struggle with this, but I think the thing that's made it fun for me,
10:57and kept me coming back doing long distance swimming is, despite having all these nerves and reservations,
11:04I've usually managed to overcome them enough, to do the kind of swings I've wanted to do.
11:12I think if there's one thing I do feel good about is, you know, I've been able to set my mind on things I've wanted to do swimming-wise,
11:21and, despite everything, come out at the other end.
11:26Another time, when the group was small, or smaller,
11:31I think I'd started to feel the pressure of hundreds of people joining the group,
11:36and asking lots of questions.
11:38It didn't always translate into lots of people turning up for swimming,
11:43lots of people wanted to know about the swim spots I've posted,
11:46but it felt quite difficult to get people together and coordinate it.
11:52And on top of that, thinking on a bad day at work,
11:55and I came home and declared to my girlfriend that I was leaving the group and dissolving it.
12:01I don't think anyone else in the group knew that at the time,
12:04and I said I'd had enough of swimming in the group.
12:07And she kept saying, don't do that, there are other people in it.
12:11But I'd made my mind up.
12:12But in the end, I settled for leaving the group myself.
12:16The next morning, I massively migrated my actions,
12:20and I fell in love with swimming again after a little sea swim,
12:24and I asked someone to let me back in the group.
12:27Since then, I've never wanted to do that again,
12:29but it does show sometimes you can really enjoy it.
12:34There might be days when, you know, you don't enjoy it so much,
12:38but there's just something about open water swimming that always pulls me back.
12:44And I think a lot of it is due to the fact that I don't always find it easy.
12:49But the challenge of it is what keeps me coming back for more.
12:52In preparation for long-distance swims,
12:56you have to do lots of miles of swimming up and down the river or the lakes or the sea,
13:02just to get yourself ready for the day.
13:05An event that happened to me years ago just brings on how dangerous it can be.
13:09At the time, the group was a lot smaller,
13:12and I'd signed up for an end-to-end swim of Windermere.
13:17At the time of signing up, I had no belief at all I could do it,
13:21and once I'd signed up, I really didn't know why I'd signed up,
13:25but I realised that then I would have to do some seniors training.
13:28One morning, I went to the river by myself at 7am, I think it was.
13:34Nobody else had wanted to come, surprisingly.
13:37And I was going to swim 10 kilometres to get ready for my Windermere swim
13:42a couple of weeks down the line.
13:45As I was swimming down, I just got an urge to look up for some reason,
13:50and when I did, I saw a rowing boat coming towards me.
13:55Obviously, the row was facing backwards,
13:57and I was metres away from being hit.
14:01God knows what would have happened to me,
14:03but it brought home just how dangerous it could be.
14:08And that's a point to make about open water swimming.
14:12As much as it can be fun, it always pays to be safe.
14:16I would advise anyone not to swim alone, really, like how I was doing,
14:21but at the time, I felt like I didn't have much joy.
14:27Many of the places where we swim, particularly in the sea,
14:39it can be busy.
14:41You can have jet steers, yachts, and R&L aircraft launching at any time.
14:46So, we do tend to push the safety aspect of it.
14:50We don't want any incidents or accidents.
14:54And knowing the tides as well is something we've really had to familiarise ourselves with.
15:00People were right when they said that swimming in Morecambe Bay is dangerous,
15:05and it can be, but I think just knowing what time the tide comes in and when it's going out,
15:12just that one piece of information can save you a lot of trouble,
15:18just having that in your mind.
15:20And as we've swam up and down Orcambe Bay,
15:23we've really been able to zone in on specific spots of the bay,
15:29and we've got to know the conditions in lots of places.
15:33So, as we're swimming up and down the bay,
15:35you do often have to change your swimming stroke
15:38or anticipate what's going to happen at certain points.
15:42And the good thing about that is we can pass that information on to other people.
15:47In 2023, I was very lucky to be invited to take part in a 15-person relays room
16:15of Lake Windermere, organised by a swimming coach called Kerry Smith.
16:20And the idea was to get 15 people to swim the length,
16:25one after the other, which would have made it a Guinness World Record.
16:30When she was setting up the swim, she was asking,
16:33did we want a day swim or a night swim?
16:35And then I told her that I wanted a day swim
16:37because I'm not very keen on swimming at night.
16:41And I do find swimming the length of Windermere unnerving enough
16:44in the daytime, but night time was just a no-man for me.
16:50With the weather turning bad as well,
16:53everybody's estimated times were falling
16:55and people were taking longer.
16:58And in the end, I was the second-to-last person to swim
17:01and I was told that I'd have to be doing a night swim.
17:05I think the minute I got that phone call,
17:08I could feel my pulse rising and coming out in a sweat
17:11and I was very close to telling her I couldn't do it.
17:16But I just reasoned with myself that everybody else had done their part
17:20and that I couldn't let their efforts go to waste by dropping out.
17:25So I did the night swim.
17:27I found it extremely difficult.
17:29All the way I felt quite close to getting out,
17:32but I kept going and going.
17:35And we all completed the swim.
17:37I think the sad part is with the safety ball,
17:41I'll function at the beginning
17:42and the disruption it caused.
17:44It wasn't ratified, so it never got put down
17:47as well as a world record swim.
18:06Just behind me here,
18:07we've got a selection of trophies
18:09that belong to Lancaster City Swimming Club.
18:13I think Lancaster City Swimming Club
18:16have played a massive part in the history of swimming
18:19around Walken Bay.
18:21I think many of the swimmers who won cross-bay swims,
18:25such as Raymond Horns, who we've interviewed,
18:28were part of Lancaster City Swimming and Water Polo Club.
18:33And, you know, a lot of the swimmers I know today
18:35who I'd say are the technically better swimmers,
18:40they've all come from mainly Lancaster City Swimming
18:43and Water Polo Club.
18:50For the future of the group,
18:52I hope it continues.
18:54It's not about adding numbers to the group, really.
18:57It's just about engaging people in the group
18:59to swim more,
19:01and the relationships it builds.
19:03I think that's the best thing about this group
19:07that I've taken from it all.
19:09Sometimes I see people join the group
19:11with no swimming experience.
19:13They don't know anybody,
19:15and within months,
19:16they're totally embedded in the group.
19:18They've found a group of friends,
19:20and they're quite confident swimming,
19:22and it's a really good feeling
19:24when I see that happening.
19:26I just like the group to continue
19:29for people to push themselves a little bit
19:32and overcome whatever it is
19:35they feel is in their way
19:36to doing the kind of swims they want to do.
19:40But it is quite a good group
19:42in terms of it's non-elitist.
19:44There's a massive range of abilities,
19:47shapes and sizes of people,
19:50and everybody seems to feel welcome,
19:52and I think that's the best part of it.
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