I took on the Thames. Would you?

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10 April 2012

First, don't try this at home. It could have ended in disaster. It was ignorant and it was dangerous. But it was not impetuous.

I have been thinking, talking, and finally fretting about swimming across the River Thames for 15 years since, in my forties, I moved into a flat on Narrow Street in the East End, looking out over the river at Limehouse Reach. I watched 20ft tides racing up and down the river. Swans, cormorants, traffic cones and sometimes corpses floated by. Barges, sailing ships, warships, cruise liners, disco boats and police launches buzzed, roared or chugged past my balcony, day and night.

Except at my favourite time. In the small hours of the morning the river is silent, alone with itself, slapping and sucking at the foreshore beneath my balcony. This would be the time to swim across, with no shipping and nobody to raise an alarm.

I'm no great swimmer, but I can stay afloat. I would make my crossing in high summer when the water was warmest, and at high tide, as it turned. I would start from the stairs at Globe Wharf on the other side and swim straight across to the Ratcliffe Cross stairs at Narrow Street.

And I would do it without a boat or any kind of flotation in tow, because otherwise it isn't real. I started telling friends of my plan.

But somehow I never got around to executing it. The years passed; I turned 50, then 55. Friends would yawn as I insisted that I'd do it.

Sometimes someone would say: "How about tonight?" and I'd be momentarily keen, then reflect that the tide wasn't right, I needed to be fresh for the morning or whatever.

Sometimes, on warm days, I'd test the temperature. Fine. So was I getting cold feet? The talk continued, however; the plans for how the lodger Tom would flash a light on the balcony across the river so I'd know the coast was clear oh yes, this would surely happen. But somehow never tonight, never this month, never this year.

The deferral was becoming Chekhovian.

In a couple of weeks I shall turn 61. London has been hot. Online tide tables said there would be high tides, midweek, in the small hours. My partner (fiercely opposed) was away.

"Come on," I thought. "Do it." I told Jonathan, an LSE student who's working for me. "I'll come too," he said. High tide, 03.35 on Thursday morning. Tom would be there on balcony duty. Supper, a few hours' sleep, then

Astonishing, how fearful I then became. How had I got myself into this? Why hadn't I kept my mouth shut? Now I understood the subliminal reason I'd never done it before. All that thinking about it and boasting about it had scared me. At midnight, as I lay my head on the pillow, at first sleep would not come.

It's being woken in the dark that's worst. I donned trunks and an old singlet to swim in, and some discardable flip-flops. We stood on the balcony. The river was very black. We called a minicab just after 3am to take us under the nearby Rotherhithe Tunnel to the other side. We crept down the Globe Stairs wordlessly, so as not to alert any flat-dwellers, and undressed. Each wondered if he'd be going ahead if it wasn't for the other.

But from my balcony came no flashing light. Could Tom not see us? A big barge slid past, heading (surprisingly fast) upstream. Then my balcony light flashed. We struck out for the other side.

There's a kind of relief, once you start. The water was choppy but not too cold, and I could feel no current. We swam silently, breaststroke, surprised at the ease. Except that across the water, perspectives were altering unaccountably.

Then I saw trees moving behind the buildings on the other side. Why? When I turned to look for the Globe Stairs behind us, they were far over to our right. We were being carried upstream. Fast. The tide was still coming in. Fast.

We decided to stay close together, not to fight the current, and keep swimming towards the opposite bank; hard work now in the choppy water.

I saw a flashing blue light moving towards us from our left. "River police!" I hissed. No, a light on a buoy, and we were being swept towards it. Soon we were almost past the King Edward VII Park, and approaching Wapping. In the first glimmer of dawn we saw sailing dinghies, moored offshore. Jonathan managed to grab a rope, and I a rudder.

We were breathless, and getting cold. We could see the stilts of a riverside boardwalk some way away, near the Prospect of Whitby pub in Wapping. If we could just reach those stilts before being swept farther we struck out. Jonathan, at 20 the stronger swimmer, did it easily. I just did it, and in doing so, understood how easily and quickly you can lose heart in fast-flowing cold water. We pulled our way round to a little creek, plunged across and climbed a high iron ladder on to a road. We had been in the water for perhaps half an hour.

For a moment I felt weak and shaky, my balance thrown, and began to shiver. We were about three-quarters of a mile upriver from Limehouse. The park was locked. No way home, but up on to a big road, the Highway, back from the river. We were barefoot, and Jonathan in only skimpy underpants. "Let's run," he said.

We flew, pounding the pavements barefoot, I feeling strangely lightheaded, my normal limp gone. It was like a dream. My brain raced. GMT! Navigational tables are in GMT! High tide would have been at 04.35, not 03.35. We pounded on. A passing man jumped, frightened, away.

And soon we were in Narrow Street, ringing the doorbell. "You disappeared," said Tom. "We saw you go in, then nothing." He hadn't called the police: "What could they do? I doubted you'd drowned."

I stopped shivering. The shower (so much mud!) was sublime. The sweet tea was nectar. The sleep was heavenly.

But it was the waking up on Thursday that felt transfigurative. Yes! I did it! I can do it. And I'll never have to do it again.

This article first appeared in The Times.

To swim or not to swim?

Bear Grylls
Explorer
I did it once and sent an email to a few friends asking them to join me — and suddenly everyone was busy! I did it solo but towed my canoe on a long line just in case. I ended up one mile downstream. The key is to swim tidal rivers at slack water — but remember, it is dangerous. I wouldn't do it again.
Bear Grylls is an author and mountaineer. He once owned a houseboat on the Thames.

Brian Griffin
Photographer
I live exactly where Matthew Parris swam from. He might have got in just below my balcony — and I think it's an absolutely crazy thing to do. I've lived on the Thames since 1980, so like him I've seen the river over many years and in the early hours of the morning, yes, it's like a mirror sometimes, so peaceful and quiet, and really quite exquisite. But I've seen the stuff that is dumped in it, and what is washed up on the beach. I've seen bodies, I've seen the whole lot, and there is no way that I would ever put my body up against the stuff that is floating down that river.
Brian Griffin's photographs of people who are making the London Olympics happen can be seen in Road to 2012 at the National Portrait Gallery until September 26.

Janet Street-Porter
Journalist
I owned a beautiful old sea captain's house on the banks of the Thames in Narrow Street for 10 years from 1973. Nothing would have persuaded me to swim in that stretch of the Thames — the currents are far too strong. As for swimming it in the dark, Matthew was beyond stupid. You only have to look at how quickly the tide goes in and out to see how dangerous the river is. Now
I confine my British bathing to regular swims at high tide in Whitstable, where the water is beautifully warm from the mud flats.
Janet Street-Porter is the author of Don't Let the Bastards Get You Down.

Kate Rew
Author
Ever since reading Iris Murdoch's Under the Net I have wanted to swim the Thames. In one scene, her characters set out under the moonlight into the river from London Bridge and she describes it as like swimming in quicksilver. Although Matthew Parris should probably have equipped himself with a bit more knowledge, I applaud his sense of adventure. It's obviously really dangerous to swim the tidal part of the Thames but it's also a very exciting idea and I would love to do it. At some point, with the proper co-operation and permission from the Port of London Authority, I will.
Kate Rew is the author of Wild Swim.

Gail Porter
TV presenter
I've just got back from a swim with the Olympic swimmer Keri-Anne Payne who is amazing, and we were in a pool. But the Thames? Er Serpentine — yes. Hampstead Heath — yes. Thames — I think I'd be very cautious because I'd be terrified of catching something because it's not very clean. If it was for some charity and I felt I had to do it I probably would, but basically, no.
Gail Porter is a TV presenter. She recently took part in the Schwim Free challenge.

Vince Cable
Politician
I greatly admire Matthew's pluck. I suspect his capacity to stay afloat is greater than mine, which is why I have no ambition to follow him — that, and the uncomfortable knowledge that the Thames takes sewage from overflowing storage tanks and acts as home to various microbiological nasties. I shall stick to boats.
Vince Cable, Business Secretary and Liberal Democrat MP for Twickenham, where there are more than 200 houseboat inhabitants.

Steven Berkoff
Playwright
What an audacious, dazzling, daring piece of derring-do. As a matter of fact, I used to swim in the Thames daily, when I was 11, when there was a beach at Tower Bridge, but I never made it to the other side. Congratulations to Matthew Parris.
Steven Berkoff, playwright. Biblical Tales is now showing at the New End Theatre, Hampstead, until August 28.

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