“It didn’t feel like five today,” says a swimmer as he enters the sauna, his skin a livid shade of red, his face so rigid with cold he is speaking out of the side of his mouth. Along with the rest of us, he has retreated into the warmth after a dip in an outdoor pool where the water is indeed an inclement five degrees Celsius (41 degrees Fahrenheit). “Could you shut the door?” a chorus replies. “It’s a cold five,” says a woman sitting in the corner. “I’d say it’s a warm 4.9,” counters a man who is doing squats and lunges. “Yesterday, it felt more like 5.5.”
It is 9:15 a.m. on a January morning, and this kind of granular discussion is standard. There are about 20 swimmers here—a hodgepodge of different ages, shapes, sizes, professions, and personalities, squashed up against one another, some still defrosting, some glistening with heat. All the usual British social barriers—awkwardness, fear of bodily contact, snobbery—have melted away. We are united by our obsession with cold-water swimming. And we are not alone.
