Miranda Richardson was a late convert to open water swimming – but now she can’t get enough of immersing herself in freezing cold water and being at one with nature in our rivers and lakes.
In fact, the BAFTA-winning and Oscar-nominated actress confesses that open water swimming is rather addictive.
“The thing is that once it gets you, wherever you are you’re looking askance at a puddle and thinking ‘I could get in there, yeah, I could, just for a minute. It’d be all right’. It’s a bit like that,” she says with a chuckle.
Richardson, 67, who’s starred in numerous films, TV and theatre productions and whose versatility even stretched to playing the comedic Queen Elizabeth 1 (Queenie) in Blackadder II, was first introduced to open water swimming during filming in Ireland a few years ago, when she took an exhilarating dip in the Irish Sea.
“I got very lucky on that day, and I was in the water for about half an hour thinking, I can’t believe this, I can’t believe I’m here,” she recalls.
“And then I started going regularly in my time off, and it becomes somewhat addictive – the endorphin rush is good, but also the rhythmic nature of swimming is great, and what you see around you is great, and there’s a healthy dose of jeopardy as well in open water swimming – you haven’t got the same infrastructure that you have in your local municipal pool or lido.
“It’s all very healthy – it’s really wonderful for both mind and body.”
Richardson now tries to go for an open water swim two or three times a week, and is a member of the Serpentine Swimming Club in London’s Hyde Park. And she’s so enamoured with wild swimming that she’s about to take part in a wild swim challenge in Norfolk in August, to raise £100,000 for WWF.
Richardson and her friend, fellow actress Maggie Service, who’s appeared on TV shows including Good Omens, Dr Who and Call the Midwife, are undertaking a tough tidal open water 3.5km Wild Swim Mission at Blakeney Point, a national nature reserve on the north Norfolk coast, on August 9 to raise funds and awareness for WWF’s work protecting and restoring coastal ecosystems, rivers and wetlands.
And the acting duo are also hoping they’ll inspire others to take part in WWF’s public Swim Challenge to swim five, 10 or 20km during August to support WWF’s work.
“I wanted to take on this swim with Maggie as a challenge for both mind and body,” says Richardson. “But it’s also about raising awareness of the beauty and fragility of our natural habitats.
“This is definitely a step up, but I’m excited to take it on – it’s kind of daunting, but great.”
She’s been training with Service, and says she has phases of managing to do an open water swim every day, declaring: “It’s a wonderful start to the day, and it’s the best part of the day.”
The coldest temperature she’s swum in is two degrees (for two minutes), and she says she’s had “a couple of squeaky times where you just have to take it easy.”
But she warns that open water swimmers, and particularly newcomers, “obviously have to be very aware, and not be stupid,” and find out about things like currents and sewage levels before even attempting to swim in a river. “You’ve got to take advice and keep up-to-date with what’s going on,” she advises.
“We’re not saying go and find a stretch of water that nobody else has found and do something dangerous,” she stresses. “Obviously you have to take your own risks, and you have to do a bit of research on where you might go, and be with someone, That’s also a very good idea, at least initially, unless you’re an extremely competent swimmer.”
Urging people to take part in the WWF Swim Challenge, she says: “I think you’d be surprised at how much you’d enjoy not just the rush, but the meditative qualities of swimming, and particularly swimming in nature.”
Of course life isn’t just about open water swimming for the busy actress, who’s just been working on a film called The Bitter End, which stars Joan Collins and Isabella Rossellini, about the later years of Wallis Simpson’s life – who became the Duchess of Windsor after marrying Edward VIII. But when she gets some free time, as well as heading for open water, whenever possible Richardson also manages to work with an ex-ballerina who does a “wonderful, glorious mixture” of dance, Pilates, and HIIT classes both in-person and on an app.
“We just all need to keep moving as we go through life so that we can balance, we can not fall, we can get up from wherever and get on,” says Richardson, who admits: “I can’t bear gyms. I know a lot of people love them and swear by them, but I don’t find the atmosphere in most of them conducive at all, so I avoid them.
“But that’s not to say I don’t have weights – I don’t have a gym, and I don’t wish for a gym, but most of what I do you can achieve with your own body weight and some free weights. “
She says she’s a “big fan” of yoga, although she hasn’t done it for a long time and admits: “I’m probably not as flexible as I’d like to think I am, but as we know, it’s not a competition.”
But overall, she says her health is pretty good, and points out: “I wouldn’t be doing this swim mission if I thought I wasn’t in a good way – I think that would be rather foolish.”
You can support Miranda Richardson and Maggie Service’s Wild Swim Mission and help them reach their £100,000 goal to raise funds for WWF’s work.
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