ILLUSTRATION: JACQUI OAKLEY


SMART TRAVELLER


NOT ES FROM AN AUTHOR FREYA BROMLEY


The writer and podcaster spent a year travelling around Britain to swim in its every tidal pool — and found an antidote to loss on her journey


You can hear it before you see it. The gentle shoosh-shooshing of the sea, followed by the roar of pebbles being dragged back into the water. There’s the smell of salt and sun cream; families on the beach. You follow a tunnel through the Ilfracombe hillside and if you run your hands along the wall, you can feel the grooves of pickaxe marks, left by the Welsh miners who created this place the 1820s. Closer, closer as the bolt of blue at the end of the passageway widens. Then, peering over the iron railings to your left, you get your first look at it: the tidal pool at Tunnels Beaches. I visited North Devon as part of my


adventure to swim in every tidal pool in Britain. From a quarry lagoon in Wales to Cornish mermaid pools via the Scottish fishing village of St Monans, I swam in 36 in a year. The Tidal Year is the book about my journey, and the journey with grief I experienced after my brother Tom’s death in 2016. My obsession with them came from a search for symbolism. The sea can be full of dangers, with its rip tides and strong currents, but a boundaried tidal pool protects you. They’re a safe place to swim in turbulent waters and I needed to dip my toes into a grief that felt overwhelming, all- consuming and unbounded. The pool at Ilfracombe — and its complex


network of six tunnels — was man-made in Victorian times. It was formed by damming the water, so it’s covered by the sea twice a day. When I arrived, the pool was submerged. I’d have to be patient. Swimming was, in many ways, a parallel exercise to grief and I found that the learnings were often the same. It ebbed and flowed. It was stormy, then calm. While I waited for the tide to change, I


walked around town, to take pictures to send my grandmother. During the Second World War, she lived in Ilfracombe. Her father was in the Merchant Navy and worked on the North Atlantic run bringing food back from America in convoys. In 1942, he came home with an address on a slip of paper and told my great- grandmother to go to Devon. She travelled with her two small children to Mrs Jewel’s Guest House, which was taking in families fleeing London. They stayed for three years. I photographed a seagull on a traffic bollard,


the queue outside The Ilfracombe Fryer and the church’s clock tower sign that reads: It Is Time To Seek The Lord. I thought about my grandmother’s life and how we were connected


by our own personal histories at Tunnels Beaches. I’d asked if she’d swum there, but she only recalled boys being whistled down from climbing the cliffs. She later went to a convent school, so wasn’t keen on swimming. “It was a mortal sin to wear a swimsuit,” she told me. Tunnels was originally gender-segregated, and horse-drawn boxes called bathing machines were wheeled to the water’s edge to protect the modesty of the ladies. When it was finally time to return, the tide


was out and the pool revealed: blue-black water hemmed in by a lime-mortar wall, the surrounding rocks standing like totems. That day it was cool. Cold, in fact. My skin tingled as I breaststroked across the water. I felt spring’s rays on my face, the disinfectant that is sunlight. My heart rate slowed. Nothing else cuts through the pain of grief


like cold water. For decades, people have visited Tunnels for this very reason. Cold- water swimming became popular in Victorian times as an antidote ‘to the ailments of modern life’. I learned this in the guidebook from the kiosk. They’ve done well to preserve this place’s history. You feel it everywhere: in the turnstiles and deck chairs for hire for £3. It’s a common theme at all the tidal pools I’ve visited. Pittenweem in Anstruther created a mini golf course to raise funds to restore the pool wall. Brixham’s Shoalstone Pool campaigned against the council to prevent its closure. Clevedon Marine Lake in Bristol relies on volunteers to keep it running. When I swam at Tunnels Beaches, I could


When I swam at Tunnels


Beaches, I could feel the past around me. It was in the water and the rocks.


There’s something ancient about it. The tunnels have told many stories


feel the past around me. It was in the water and the rocks. There’s something ancient about it. The tunnels have told many stories. Before they were carved, the coves were used by smugglers. The rock pools surrounding the beach were studied by Philip Henry Gosse, a biologist and friend of Charles Darwin, who found new seawater species there. That’s the special thing about tidal pools.


They’re these magical places that connect us to the past — and to future generations — in a way I’ve not experienced elsewhere. My grandmother has her stories here. So do I. It’s where, I’m sure, you’ll write your own, too.


The Tidal Year: A Memoir on Grief, Swimming and Sisterhood by Freya Bromley is published by Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99. freyabromley.com


JUNE 2023 39


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132  |  Page 133  |  Page 134  |  Page 135  |  Page 136  |  Page 137  |  Page 138  |  Page 139  |  Page 140  |  Page 141  |  Page 142  |  Page 143  |  Page 144  |  Page 145  |  Page 146  |  Page 147  |  Page 148  |  Page 149  |  Page 150  |  Page 151  |  Page 152  |  Page 153  |  Page 154  |  Page 155  |  Page 156  |  Page 157  |  Page 158  |  Page 159  |  Page 160  |  Page 161  |  Page 162  |  Page 163  |  Page 164  |  Page 165  |  Page 166  |  Page 167  |  Page 168  |  Page 169  |  Page 170  |  Page 171  |  Page 172  |  Page 173  |  Page 174  |  Page 175  |  Page 176  |  Page 177  |  Page 178  |  Page 179  |  Page 180  |  Page 181  |  Page 182  |  Page 183  |  Page 184  |  Page 185  |  Page 186  |  Page 187  |  Page 188  |  Page 189  |  Page 190  |  Page 191  |  Page 192  |  Page 193  |  Page 194  |  Page 195  |  Page 196  |  Page 197  |  Page 198  |  Page 199  |  Page 200  |  Page 201  |  Page 202  |  Page 203  |  Page 204