getting... cold, warm, really warm, cold...

My 2012 open water swim season started on 31st March in Brighton, 20 minutes at 8C. Scattered with beautiful bright yellow flakes of sunlight, the water vague, muddy brown, swirly, totally opaque. On warm pebbles by the sea wall I sat and thawed.

Nothing in this world is a soft and yielding as water. Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it. (Lao Tzu)

Denham Lake throughout April was usually overcast, breathtaking and glassy clear. Rubber swathed tri freaks gawped in disbelief as i dove off the jetty. I started with 750m and worked up to 2k or more at 9 to 10C. The guy who runs the place invariably added a degree or two to make us feel better, until we got in and realised what he'd done.

6th May was the Speedo Spring Swim in Poole Harbour. 1,500m at 10.5C and as bitter as you'd like on that windswept misty early morning beach. I think someone sneaked up and swapped my socks for a pair two sizes smaller while I swam. On the way home my brother couldn't breathe in the car, the heater was on so high.

Eton 10k on 27th May. I was booked to do a 3.8k elsewhere that day but the organisers told me I would have to wear a wetsuit because it would be under 14C. I booked the 10k never having swum more than 4k. By the time we did the swim it was 19C.

Getting cold was never a problem. Not when I hit a wall at 5k and knew I couldn't finish the swim. not when my Scottish ancestry kicked in and I refused to pay £50 for a 5K swim. Not when I limped over the finish line in just under 4 hours.

Faeries, come take me out of this dull world, For I would ride with you upon the wind, Run on the top of the dishevelled tide, and dance upon the mountains like a flame. (Yeats)

4th of June I was in Slachtensee, Berlin. I swam a couple of kilometres totally alone except for swallows dipping, skimming as they fed and cormorants who sat, bookends on a half sunken branch. Flowering vines that trailed into the water and green trees all around me.

9th of June I swam the Gulf of Corryvreckan and the waters around Lochgilpead, 10 or 11C maybe. If Denham was glassy, then this was pellucid, crystalline. You could 20m or more under the water. Scott plucked scallops as big as your fist from the seabed. (Barbecued and eaten just before we arrived, as luck would have it).

Up the West Coast faerie magic floats in the limpid air. You can see it clearly. Go there and you'll know that I'm telling you the truth. Just don't drive up in one day from London.

16th June, Dover Harbour. The BLDSA Champion of Champions, was not me. I managed to finish the 3 mile second from last, then get dragged kicking screaming and shivering more or less straight to the briefing for the 1 mile. Valuable lessons were learned. mostly about chafing, greasing and entering BLDSA events.

Otto Maigler see. Viel Laichkraut hier.

30th June. My good friend picked me up at 6am from my hotel in Hürth for an early swim. Otto Maigler see near Cologne is "the most sought after bathing lake in the region." Especially if you love forests of weeds just below the surface. Johannes was even more freaked by this than I was. He likely will bear the scars for life.

8th July. Baggersee in Berlin. The water was cool, slurry brown, overhung by menacing thunderclouds. As lovely and inviting as only a piece of open water can be when you haven't swum for days. And as promised by my witty tourist guide, the surrounding foliage really was festooned with plastic beer rings and rubbish. Complete with beer swilling, pot smoking local youths with misspelt tattoos.

On the 5th August I failed to swim the three laps of a VOTWO 3.8k in Bournemouth with a back section against a wicked current. I bailed out after taking 2 hours to swim 2.5k mostly backwards in spite of my best efforts to the contrary.

Fully Become. Take full possession of your world before embarking to discover the next one. (I Ching)

18th August. On holiday in New Quay a grey seal escorted us the whole way across the bay. We hoped to get a closer look at the dolphins on our daily swims. A dolphin spotter told us that dolphins sometimes ganged up on harbour porpoise and beat them to death for kicks. Being almost identical in size to harbour porpoises, but nowhere near as agile, Jez and I decided we would happily not bump in to Flipper and his mates after all.

Last race of the season, 8th October, Hampton Court Swim. After several days of heavy rain, 3.8k at 12C ably assisted by about 10 million gallons of raw sewage. Managed 11 minutes per k and avoided amoebic dysentery. So I was a double winner.

A week later I was dodging an assortment of jellyfish in the Andaman sea in Thailand, some deadlier than others. 29C and the water just slightly more humid than the air. All that hot water swimming and no buzz at all.

When I got home two weeks later all the lakes were shut. Bought a season ticket for Parliament Hill Lido, a stainless steel unheated pool open all year round. Apparently some weirdos swim there all throughout the winter.

Ordinary men hate solitude. The master makes use of it, embracing his aloneness, realising he is one with the whole universe (Lau Tzu)