How did I become a Wild Swimming Guide?

As this is my first blog I thought I would start at the beginning, how did I end up doing what I think is the best job ever, taking lovely people to beautiful places and going for a swim. Well it all started on a mountain in Wales, well it started before that I suppose, but the idea came into my conciousness on that mountain, but I'll get to that.

The mountain in question, little did I know when I was stood taking this photo the significance this particular mountain would end up holding for me.

So a little on my background. I grew up on a beach in north west Ireland, yes kinda literally on the beach, my childhood home was beside the beach and so I spent most of my childhood out and about on the beach or in the sea, that's where the love of being in the water came from, long before it was called Wild Swimming. It was my escape from the usual challanges of childhood. Fast forward to 2002 and I moved to Plymouth, Devon for university, I did not know then just what an amazing palce the South West would turn out to be, still my home to this day.

Fast forward again to the winter of 2011, I had left the full time job working in an outdoor centre which I had had since leaving university, I was going freelance and so was googling all outdoor centres on Dartmoor, who would I work for, what would I do? So much possiblity. This began 10 years of working for many different organisations with a whole host of clients, from Princes Trust students on Dartmoor (still some of the best and most challenging work I've ever done) to primary school children in the woods to Qatari navel officers learning to navigate . I learnt a lot during this time, not just about some of the amazing landscapes I got to call my office but also about how different each and every one of us is, I learnt to meet people where they were and help them build skills, confidence and a love of being outside.

That 10 years took me all over the South West, to Wales, Spain, France, the Lake District, Scotland in the winter, many adventures, lots I got to call work. Like so many it ended abruptly with covid. Like always I adapted and got a 'real job', by that I mean I worked more in an office and less in the outdoors, again I learnt more new skills, got to be a long term manager to an amazing team again, all with the added bonus of Wild Swimming every lunchtime on Plymouth Hoe. It was interesting and different but again this came to an end, again abruply in March of 2024 when I was made redundant days after a close family members diagnosis with a life limiting disease. This is the sort of thing that makes you sit up and pay attention to life! It made me pause...

I was lucky enough to get some redundancy and allowed myself time to decide what was next, and this brings me back to that mountain, about a week into a much needed holiday in my van in Wales. Walking for me is such an escape, the rythem of the movement, the wide open views, the physcial exertion, the feelings of awe. It was all of this while coming up the side of a wall on the 2nd or 3rd mountain of the day, that it suddenly came to me, I wanted to be back out in these amazing places more of the time, all the time, I wanted this to be my career again, it hadn't really ever not been, I'd always kept my hand in, but now I was certain this was what I was going to do again. Another thought formed, why not combine the best of what I know with the thing I currently love the most, getting in cold water, swimming, wild swimmming, call it what you want but those of us who do it know the feeling is like no other.

And that was it. Aside from working out how to build a website, gaining a qualification in looking after swimmers in open water and making a few decision on what to start my offering with, that was it, I was running my own business taking people walking and swimming. And as they say the rest is history......

Me not long after that decision, on top of another mountain (it was a ridge day), hot, tired, sweaty....but oh so happy!