The Best Wild Swimming Books Written by UK Authors
Wild swimming has surged in popularity across Britain over the past two decades, and the literature surrounding it has grown just as richly. From lyrical accounts of plunging into Scottish lochs at dawn to practical guides for navigating the tidal pools of Cornwall, UK authors have produced some of the most compelling outdoor writing of the modern era. Whether you are new to open water swimming or a seasoned cold-water enthusiast looking for your next read, this guide covers the essential books that belong on your shelf.
The movement owes much of its mainstream visibility to a handful of pioneering writers who translated their personal obsession with natural water into books that resonated far beyond niche outdoor communities. Roger Deakin’s Waterlog is the obvious starting point, but the genre has expanded considerably since its publication in 1999, and there is now a remarkable range of titles covering wild swimming from a historical, ecological, personal, and practical angle.
The Book That Started It All: Roger Deakin’s Waterlog
It is impossible to write about wild swimming literature without beginning with Roger Deakin. Published in 1999, Waterlog: A Swimmer’s Journey Through Britain is the foundational text of the modern British wild swimming movement. Deakin, a Suffolk-based writer and environmentalist, spent a year swimming through rivers, lakes, lidos, and seas across Britain, treating the country as what he called a “swimmer’s map.” The book is part travelogue, part nature writing, and part quiet political argument about public access to water.
Deakin writes with an intimacy and precision that makes even the coldest, most unremarkable stretch of river feel profound. He swims through the moat of his own farmhouse in Suffolk, navigates the waters of the Lake District, crosses to the Scilly Isles, and finds himself in encounters with landowners, fishermen, and local characters that reveal a great deal about British attitudes to land, ownership, and the outdoors. His argument — that the British public has been progressively fenced away from its own natural waterways — remains as relevant today as it was when the book was first published.
Deakin passed away in 2006, but his influence on British outdoor culture is immeasurable. Waterlog is not simply a swimming book; it is one of the finest pieces of nature writing Britain has produced. If you read nothing else on this list, read this.
Kate Rew and the Outdoor Swimming Society
Kate Rew is the founder of the Outdoor Swimming Society, one of the most significant organisations promoting wild and open water swimming in the United Kingdom. Established in 2006, the Society has helped bring wild swimming from the margins of outdoor culture into something approaching the mainstream, advocating for safer access to natural water, better information for swimmers, and a broader cultural appreciation of open water.
Rew’s book Wild Swim: River, Lake, Lido and Sea: The Best Places to Swim Outdoors in Britain, co-authored with photographer Dominick Tyler and published in 2008, is the guidebook that introduced thousands of people to the practical side of wild swimming. It catalogues over 150 locations across England, Scotland, and Wales with beautiful photography and clear, honest assessments of each spot. Rather than sensationalising the experience or downplaying the risks, Rew writes with the pragmatic enthusiasm of someone who genuinely wants more people to get into the water safely.
The book covers the Scottish Highlands, the rivers of the Welsh valleys, the chalk streams of Hampshire, and the sea pools of West Cornwall, among many others. Each entry provides useful information about access, seasonal conditions, and what to expect, making it a genuinely practical companion rather than just an aspirational coffee table book.
Daniel Start and the Wild Swimming Series
Daniel Start has produced what is arguably the most comprehensive series of wild swimming guidebooks available for Britain. Published through Wild Things Publishing, his Wild Swimming series covers England, Wales, Scotland, and specific regions in considerable detail. Start brings both the eye of a travel photographer and the rigour of a researcher to his writing, and the results are books that function both as practical guides and as compelling arguments for spending more time outdoors.
Wild Swimming: 300 Hidden Dips in the Rivers, Lakes and Waterfalls of Britain was the first in the series and remains one of the bestselling outdoor guides published in the UK. Start’s approach is methodical without being dry — he writes with evident affection for the landscapes he covers, and his descriptions of swimming spots in the Lake District, Dartmoor, and the Cairngorms capture the specific character of each place rather than reducing them to interchangeable bodies of water.
His subsequent regional guides, including Wild Swimming in Scotland and various county-specific volumes, have filled in the gaps left by the original book and provided swimmers with the kind of granular local knowledge that is genuinely hard to find elsewhere. Start also addresses practical concerns honestly, including information about water quality, seasonal access issues, and the legal position of swimmers in different parts of the UK — a matter that varies considerably between England, Wales, and Scotland.
The Legal Context: Swimming Rights in the UK
Any serious engagement with wild swimming literature in Britain requires at least a passing understanding of access law, and the better guidebooks address this directly. The situation differs markedly across the nations of the UK.
In Scotland, the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 established a statutory right of responsible access to most land and water, including rivers and lochs, provided swimmers act in accordance with the Scottish Outdoor Access Code. This means that wild swimming in Scotland carries considerably fewer legal complications than in England and Wales, and it is one of the reasons that Scottish lochs — from Loch Lomond in the south to the remote waters of Sutherland — feature so prominently in swimming literature.
In England and Wales, the position is more complicated. There is no general public right to swim in inland waters, though rights of navigation exist on some rivers, and public access to some open waters has been established through historic use or specific agreements. The work of organisations such as the Outdoor Swimming Society and the River Access for All campaign has pushed for clearer and more generous access rights, but the legal landscape remains patchy. Responsible writers on wild swimming acknowledge this honestly rather than encouraging readers to ignore it.
Lynne Ramsay and the Literature of Cold Water
The physiological and psychological dimensions of cold-water swimming have attracted their own literary tradition in the UK. Several authors have written about the effects of immersion in cold natural water, and the genre sits at an interesting intersection of memoir, health writing, and nature writing.
Jessica J. Lee’s Turning: A Swimming Memoir is one of the most distinctive books to emerge from the British wild swimming scene in recent years. Lee, a British-Canadian writer based for a period in Berlin, spent a year swimming in the lakes around the German capital, but her writing connects directly to a broader tradition of British nature writing and she has been widely published and reviewed in the UK context. Her prose is precise and emotionally intelligent, and the book raises questions about landscape, belonging, and what we are actually looking for when we get into cold water.
While Lee’s geographic focus is not exclusively British, her work has been embraced enthusiastically by UK readers and writers, and she is a significant figure in the contemporary English-language wild swimming literary scene. Her subsequent book Draw Your Weather and her nature writing essays have further established her reputation.
Anna Deacon and Vicki Allan: Taking the Plunge
Taking the Plunge: The Healing Power of Wild Swimming for Mind, Body and Soul by Anna Deacon and Vicki Allan, published in 2019, approaches wild swimming from a specifically therapeutic angle. Both authors are based in Scotland, and the book draws heavily on the swimming culture of Scottish lochs and coastline, as well as contributions from swimmers across the UK who describe how regular immersion in cold natural water has affected their mental health, anxiety, grief, and overall wellbeing.
The timing of the book’s publication was significant. The relationship between cold-water swimming and mental health had begun to attract serious scientific attention — researchers at the University of Portsmouth and elsewhere were investigating the physiological mechanisms behind the mood effects that many wild swimmers describe — and Deacon and Allan were among the first UK writers to bring these ideas together with personal testimony in an accessible format.
The book is particularly strong on the community dimension of wild swimming. Many of the contributors describe how swimming groups — informal gatherings at local lochs, beaches, and rivers — had become a source of social connection and mutual support that they had not found elsewhere. This community aspect of UK wild swimming, often organised through local groups, the Outdoor Swimming Society’s community platform, or simply through word of mouth, is something that purely practical guidebooks tend to underplay.
Joe Minihane and the Return to Water
Joe Minihane’s Floating: A Life Regained, published in 2017, is one of the most honest and readable accounts of what wild swimming can do for a troubled mind. Minihane, a journalist and writer, describes how a period of severe anxiety led him to Roger Deakin’s Waterlog, and how he subsequently set out to recreate as many of Deakin’s swims as possible across Britain.
The book works on several levels simultaneously. It is a tribute to Deakin and an exploration of his legacy. It is a personal memoir about mental health and recovery. And it is a practical engagement with real swimming locations across England and Wales, many of which are described with the kind of vivid, specific detail that makes you want to pack a towel and head for the nearest river. Minihane is honest about the difficulties — the cold, the legal uncertainties, the occasional hostility of landowners — while making clear why none of that is sufficient reason to stay out of the water.
Floating has resonated strongly with readers who came to wild swimming through their own experiences of anxiety or low mood, and it sits comfortably alongside Deacon and Allan’s work as part of a growing body of British literature exploring the relationship between natural water and mental health.
Regional Writing and the Lake District
The Lake District holds a special place in British wild swimming culture and literature. Its combination of accessible fell walking, dramatic scenery, and an abundance of tarns, rivers, and lakes — many of which have no formal access restrictions — makes it the most popular inland wild swimming destination in England. Windermere, Ullswater, Coniston Water, and the smaller tarns of the high fells all feature repeatedly in swimming guides and memoirs.
Several writers have focused specifically on the Lakes. The region appears prominently in Start’s guidebooks and in Deakin’s Waterlog, but it has also attracted more focused literary attention. The combination of Romantic literary heritage — Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the broader tradition of writing about the northern fells — and a modern outdoor culture makes the Lake District an unusually rich subject for nature writers.
Moving Forward
Once you have the fundamentals in place, the possibilities open up considerably. The UK offers fantastic opportunities for anyone interested in this hobby, and with the right foundation you will be well placed to make the most of them.
