Swimming at Charlestown, St Austell

Typically any moderate wind direction, other than a fairly rare easterly works at Charlestown. Taking all necessary precautions, you can swim out of the harbour or opt for safer entry off the beach immediately next to the harbour…on either side. From there you have a number of options. *If you are swimming from the harbour check the tide. There isn’t a lot of water at low tide! A very short swim may include entry in the harbour and a swim around the corner to the beach. A longer swim may include a round-swim to Duporth Bay to the south (anywhere from 1-2km) or circular route from Charlestown to Porthpean Beach and back (approx 3km). Please be aware that some of the route is quite secluded and these swims would be best with a swim ‘buddy’ and possibly tow floats. If unsure, swim these routes on an incoming tide.

…and here’s additional footage of Porthpean. Porthpean has a small car park just above the beach. Charlestown has a larger car park and some free on-road parking.

Helford River Wild Swimming Event

At the start of 2022 there were loads of westerly winds. In an attempt to escape the dreaded ‘westerly’ we popped over to the Helford and the lesser well known Gillan Creek. Thank God for those westerlies! Ever since we’ve carried out quite a bit of activity in both areas. Both are absolutely stunning and both areas are fairly well protected from most wind directions. More importantly, both are really safe areas to swim (in the right conditions) and have very easy exit points.

For 2023 and the foreseeable future we have put together a series of wild swimming days out. These are very casual, walking - swimming days out. They’re designed specifically for people that simply want to turn up and swim at their own pace. No open water swimming experience is required and participants can swim whatever stroke they like, over very flexible distances. We typically take in 3-4 swims over an afternoon or morning.

SUMMER FOOTAGE

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AERIAL FOOTAGE

Some aerial footage, shot in the winter over a number of the areas and beaches we’ll hopefully include on the 2023 day out.

The Devil's Chimney Cave Swim

We’re fairly certain this cave doesn’t have an official name, so we’ve named it the ‘Devil’s Chimney’. There’s a small, dark opening that could easily be missed and has been at least once by us! From the outside it looks very unimpressive, simply a small dark opening under a large rock. When you swim into the cave it’s quite narrow, it’s dull and not particularly impressive. Once you get into the cave, that’s where the magic. There’s what we like to describe as a chimney that allows light to flood in and suddenly this dark cave is transformed into this bright, rather spectacular space. The light seems to bounce off the seabed and illuminate the whole cave. One swimmer on the last swim we did here summed it up perfectly. We arrived at the cave and she said “is this it!?”. Once she’d gone the whole way through her entire facial expression had changed and she said “…can we do it again!?”.

Before I’m inundated with exact location requests I’ll point out that to get to the cave you need the right conditions and tides. If you don’t do your research you could get in trouble. I won’t be handing out location info in a hurry.

OUR TOP 5 ONE-OFF SWIMS

These aren’t necessarily the best swimming locations that we’ve experienced. They’re the moments when the conditions were perfect and all those little, random elements aligned and we got it perfectly right.

1. PORTHCURNO : I didn’t swim this one but covered the water safety. We turned up and swam at 9am a few years ago. The BBC had loads of vehicles in the car park for the filming of Poldark and we must have missed all of the action by about an hour. On the beach there was a very light off shore breeze. The sun was out and it was warm. There were nudists on the beach next door, kit off already it was that warm! The water was crystal clear and as we approached the 1km mark an opera singer started warming up at the Minnack Theatre. Her voice was carried across the water by the wind. This is a swim that has stayed with me for a long time and I doubt I’ll forget.

2. MOTHER IVEY’S BAY : during one of our Charity swims we swam at Mother Ivey’s Bay early in the morning. We’d already completed 2 swims and the sky was clear, so it was freezing! Despite being the middle of summer there was frost on the ground and our feet hurt walking down to the first swims. However, by the time we got to Mother Ivey’s it had warmed up. The sun was in the sky and the water was stunning. Pan flat, there were shafts of light piercing through the water and stretching down to the sea bed. Not a sole to be seen anywhere and perfect quiet. Mother Ivey’s remains one of my favourite north coast swims.

3. ST JUST-IN-ROSELAND POOL / HARBOUR : having been told about it on more than one occasion this was the first time that I swam in the tidal pool, at St Just-in-Roseland. We sailed and moored up fairly close, before rowing to a nearby beach. We then walked along the coastal path to the pool. As it was a glorious sunny day, I walked the coastal path in my swimming trunks. At the start of the swim is a beautiful old church and I got some curious…and some horrified looks from Sunday morning church goers as I walked past the church….at the exact time most exited the Sunday morning service. Lovely swim, phenomenal surrounds and landscape that surrounds this particular route. You need to swim in the pool on a Spring high tide or you’ll run aground!

4. NANJIZAL & THE SONG OF THE SEA : the walk to Nanjizal alone is worth the effort. ‘The Song of the Sea’ is the famous crack in the rock, just in front of the famous rock pool. Last year we walked down and swam through the crack. Breathtaking rock feature and stunning to swim through. There’s a real mix of excitement, fear and beautiful landscape and views when you do a swim like this.

5. LAMORNA TO MOUSEHOLE : a swim on our wish list for some time. I love Lamorna. It can get seaweed stuck in the cove and isn’t always ideal but when you get it right you have tranquil, beautifully clear water, an abundance of sea life… This swim started quite bumpy. The sea was full of jellyfish but they were all fairly deep….so I thought. Until I realised they weren’t really deep, just really small! Any ‘Father Ted’ fans out there might remember the scene with the cows! This was another swim with elements of excitement, beauty, slight fear and fatigue (I wasn’t that fit at the time) all rolled into one. I loved approaching Mousehole from the west, something I hadn’t done before. Incredible seascape the whole way along. Great swim.

Products designed for open water swimmers

Tom from the Sea Swim Cornwall team is very imaginative and has a background in photography and some graphic design. Over the early stages of 2020 he put these talents to good use and set about creating an open water swimming / wild swimming online shop. Most of the products we’ve produced have either been designed by Tom or sketched out….for a ‘proper’ professional to draw up for us.

We’ve tried our very best to create and design products that either didn’t exist or we’ve taken every day products and given them a swimming-twist.

From tote bags to pin badges, woolly hats (for you crazy winter swimmers!) to Calendars and car stickers. We’ve also done our research and sourced fantastic local products that we hope to post out far-and-wide.

The majority of our products are made locally (in Cornwall). Our products are as environmentally friendly as possible and if they’re not, we’re currently looking into alternatives. We’re also very proud of our packaging! In 10 months of trading the only packaging that we’ve purchased is brown paper. We sourced a shed load of old packaging from an old man that lives a few miles down the road at the start of the year and we re-use all of the packaging that we receive from our suppliers. It doesn’t always look entirely polishing when packaged up but….well, we don’t care! For the 2 minutes that the package will be seen we simply don’t think it’s worth the environmental impact.

Assisted swims in Cornwall

During the summer we often took out 2 rescue boards per paddler (water safety member), so we attached one board to the other using a leash. This was a Covid measure….so that if someone had stitch, cramp, had some sort of issue they could clamber onto the extra board without having to come into close contact with any of the rescue crew. This was a very good system (not that anyone actually needed it) and it also got Tom and Jo thinking.

We’ve had lots of enquiries, had a few nervous swimmers….there are lots of swimmers out there that want to complete various A to B swims but are nervous about the conditions and distance. So they miss out. We’d like to be as inclusive as possible but we’re also realistic - and have to be from a safety point of view.

So as of the 2021 season we’re offering a new service. We’ll offer people the opportunity to complete various swims that may not generally be open to them….because of their fitness, confidence, a disability….whatever the reason.

We’ll take swimmers on 1-2-1 swims around places like St Michael’s Mount and Kynance Cove using 2 rescue boards - which will be attached. The swimmer can pick-and-choose the sections of the swim that they complete and then hop onto the rescue board and get a tow around other sections…and a well deserved rest. This will ultimately allow the swimmer the experience of completing some world class, bucket-list worthy swims, without necessarily completing the entire distance. Opening up a whole new list of swims for lots of individuals.

If you are interested in this service simply contact us next summer and we’ll give you the full rundown.

Summer Summary

What a year! And it’s not over just yet…we have a few more swims up our sleeves and we’re also looking at winter, cold water activity. Although myself (Tom) and Jo have very low BMIs and we don’t always do well in the cold!!!

So we had to cancel all of our long weekend holidays, although we did put on a couple of private, bespoke group bookings. We ran a reduced capacity 10km event and held a large number of what we call ‘last minute swims’, coaching sessions, private group bookings, private swims and we have supported a number of individuals swim 10km distances.

OUR BIGGEST HITS :

• REMOTE SWIMS : we bought a new device mid-summer that can send out a GPS signal and an alert to the emergency services via satellites. This has meant that we have been able to host swims in more remote areas as we’re no longer reliant on VHF radio and mobile phones.

• ‘LAST MINUTE SWIMS’ : have been an outstanding success. After arranging, re-arranging, rescheduling, cancelling a high volume of swims early on, we flip the way we do things on it’s head. As well as taking booking dates we now look at the conditions on a Tuesday/Wednesday and publish our weekend swims (based on those conditions). We also do this for mid-week swims (peak season).

• KYNANCE COVE : we’ve wanted to hold this swim for a long time and it went perfectly. The conditions were read and predicted very accurately and it was a very popular swim, with fantastic feedback.

• CAVE SWIMS : these came about by chance but have been really well received. It’s something a little different, exciting and part of an already stunning swim route.

• NANJIZAL/SONG OF THE SEA : Nanjizal has always been one of my favourite places in the world. Famous for it’s natural sea pool at low tide. We swam this beauty at sunset and swam through the famous crack in the rocks!

• ST MICHAEL’S MOUNT : We’ve held a large number of swims around this stunning and famous landmark. Some in glassy-flat conditions. We’ll continue to hold these swims long term. Get that bucket list item ticked.

• PENBERTH COVE/LAMORNA COVE : We’ve added to our list of favourites and we’ll take the winter season to explore even more stunning swims.

• MINACK : although we’ve offered swims to Logan Rock for some time for some odd reason we’ve never gone the ‘other way’ and had a good look at the Minack Theatre. We’ve remedied this little issue. Now adding the theatre to our Logan Rock swim.

• CHARITY SWIM : we swam 22km (over 22 beaches) and managed to purchase a wheelchair for the Jubilee Pool. We also discovered some (more) stunning swims - Mother Ivey’s Bay was one of our favourites.

• PETITION : So after some near misses in Penzance we launched our own petition, asking the Government to bring in legislation and update current laws. Recently the petition reached 27,000 signatures…we still have some way to go, however.

• ONLINE SHOP : during lockdown we finally had the time to launch our online shop properly. We’re really happy with it’s progress and have produced a range of products - like Calendars, pocket make-up mirrors, resistance swimming cords, greetings cards, bags, tide clocks, tow floats…. we’re constantly adding to the range.