Inland water access = a safer society?
Today, 25th July 2023 is world drowning prevention day. A good day to talk about the link between inland water access, safety and drowning prevention.
What? You’re going to use a tragic life event to parade the cause for wild swimmers to swim wherever they like? That’s a bit tasteless isn’t it? Bear with me 😉
No-one can hide away from the summer headline “Teenager loses life in river” “They were a strong swimmer; I don’t understand why they didn’t make it back”. Often incidents that could be avoided with the right education. Has our lack of inland water access increased these headlines? Has it made us a more at-risk nation? After all, humans will get into water on a hot day regardless of a “No swimming” sign. Could improved inland water access reduce those incidents?
Of course, as a wild swimmer in the Peak District, I’d love to be able to swim without the threat of confrontation, of being told no. As a coach and guide I want to be able to say to my swimmers, go swim, be free without the “by the way, this might be civil trespass and this is how to handle that” conversation (a post for another day). In reality, those two points are luxuries, nice to haves for those interested and educated enough to ponder. Many don’t have that, our young people in particular.
I know and understand water precisely because I’ve spent a lot of time around it, mucking about as a kid at the pool, playing on beaches and later as a kayaker. I was privileged to experience it all because I had access to a cheap swimming pool, parents who took me to the beach and were happy to drive a few hours to find rivers we were “allowed” to kayak on. I understand and am therefore safer around water because of it.
Over the last few years, I’ve taken clients out from mainland Europe, who grew up in a culture where summertimes were spent at the river/lake/reservoir with their parents. The type of inland water body’s we don’t have free access to in England and Wales. Those European clients intrinsically knew what to do in outdoor waters. They might not have been able to explain it in words but they knew how to deal with the cold, what their body signals were to get out, what to look out for when choosing a place to swim, what to do in an emergency. Knowledge given to them by a childhood of positive experience.
Alongside the fun and the cake of my job the most important thing to me is that I can pass on the knowledge people need to stay safe when they swim. Sadly, the UK has become a water illiterate nation. My British clients rarely have those intrinsic skills their European counterparts have. The terrifyingly dark public health adverts of the 1970s and 80s, the all-too-common no swimming signs, regular hints that “you’ll die” if you enter outdoor waters has led to a nation scared out of our waters and therefore losing the skills they need to stay safe.
Our prohibition from water has left us with two generations of parents unable to educate their children of the risks and more importantly how to manage them. Our lack of inland access has exacerbated it. By taking away access to our inland waters we’ve taken away our ability to properly learn about them.
I, and many others want to give our children and young people the opportunity to experience outdoor waters. To teach them the basics of lifesaving, how to swim safely and within their limits. Only through education can we truly hope to keep our young people safe and that experiential, in water, learning is the best we can give them.
We don’t teach our kids to swim in a classroom, we put them in a pool. I can talk until I’m blue in the face about outdoor water safety, the potential risks, how to manage them and what to do in an emergency in a classroom but, until I put that person into the water, they’re just words. Until they’ve tried to throw a throwline over water or tried to reach someone with a pole they can’t truly appreciate how to help someone in difficulty.
But we hit a barrier. Swimming’s not permitted in the vast majority of our inland waters. As soon as you start to discuss it with council’s, education authorities, the barriers come up. If a council or landowners’ base position is “no swimming” then trying to negotiate access to run a water safety session, for either adults or children gets complicated. At best it’s a long arduous, hoop filled challenge, at worst it’s an outright no. Many projects don’t get off the ground.
If we took away the assumption of exclusion we hold to in England and Wales those sessions could happen so much more easily. I, and many others, could be helping to keep people safe by teaching them how. Wider inland water access can absolutely be about keeping people safe as well as the many wider physical and mental health benefits we hear so much about.
Until we have free access to play in, on and near the water I fear we’ll remain a water illiterate nation and those headlines will just keep on coming.
More information on UK drowning statistics and why it’s important to understand them in the context of the wider world can be found here https://www.outdoorswimmingsociety.com/drowning-statistics/
More information on the current legalities of inland water swimming https://www.outdoorswimmingsociety.com/is-it-legal/
Why water access matters https://www.britishcanoeing.org.uk/news/2023/why-blue-space-matters-the-freedom-to-escape
