There is nothing so good for the soul as water. I swim in the Ladies’ Pond on Hampstead Heath almost every day and, at this time of year, it’s about 6°C. For the few minutes I am in – and you don’t stay in long at that temperature, never more than a minute per degree or you get hypothermia – I am entirely in the NOW. The cold burns, the brain goes ‘what the heck?!’, the body swims and takes in the heron and the cormorants, the branches of the trees, the glisten of sun on water. For that expanse of time there is nothing else. All the problems of normal life fade away. There is just me, and water, and pond, and nature. Bliss.
Of course, not everyone likes swimming in a muddy
