text: What the hell am I doing, I ask myself, as I stand shivering on the brink. It’s April and my first proper swim of the year. The North Sea stretches before me. I dip a toe in. It’s absolutely freezing . . . of course. I wobble over the sharp shingle, into the waves, until I’m waist-deep. Gasping for breath, I take the plunge. And, within seconds, making frantic strokes, I’m swept up and I’m swimming. And it is glorious. Scroll down for video . Sarah Foot says her affair with open water began on Hampstead Heath after a local swimming pool closed down, and has taken her to swimming in the North Sea off the coast of Suffolk (pictured) I’m not one of those athletic people who glide through the water with a sleek, racing crawl - I’m that woman with the white-hatted head bobbing up and down offshore in a rather staid breast stroke . You don’t have to be watching Poldark for a dip in the sea to set your heart racing. I love to swim. Miserable winters, exams, love affairs . . . I’ve swum through them all, wherever I can find the water. Most of the time this means municipal pools from which I emerge reeking of chlorine and praying I’ve avoided verrucas. So best of all has to be swimming outdoors, and here on the East coast in Suffolk it is now warm enough — just about — for the sea. And despite the greyness, the appalling cold, and the downright bleakness of the North Sea here, I’m in heaven. The poet Byron — who was every bit as proud of his phenomenal swimming prowess as his verses — called the experience a ‘buoyancy of spirits I never feel on any other occasion’. I don’t have to swim the four-mile-long Hellespont between Asia and Europe as he did to know what he meant. I, too, am buoyed up in every way. Yet I’m not one of those athletic people who glide through the water with a sleek, racing crawl. Nor am I that hardy chap I read about recently, known as the ‘human polar bear’, who swims round icebergs in the Arctic. A 30-minute dip leaves me exhausted. I can’t even dive. You need look no further than Aidan Turner in Poldark to see how a dip in the ocean can set pulses racing . I’m that woman with the white-hatted head bobbing up and down offshore in a rather staid breast stroke. But in the water I don’t care. And, for me, that’s the magic of swimming. I am completely free. For a few precious moments, all my troubles wash away. Nothing bothers me and my whole world flows ‘swimmingly’. Of course, it would be easier to get in if it weren’t so damned cold — nudging a steely 8C (47F). Yet however enticing it is to bask in languid, tropical waters along with colourful fish, and laze about in Mediterranean and Caribbean seas, give me the Atlantic any day. Because, for me, the most perfect swim of all is in Scotland, off the Hebrides. What I love is the emptiness, the menthol cool of the water. On the Isle of Islay I have found deserted bays and swum completely alone or just with those I love, the sea crystal-clear and only the sound of the curlews and the water lapping over the rock pools. It’s not warm, of course, but immersed in that wild sea is the closest to beauty I have ever been. Why does it affect me so? Freud, not surprisingly, had a view on a love of swimming. He believed it disguised a desire to return to the amniotic waters of the womb. But that’s the sort of Freudian thing he would say. I prefer the thoughts of novelist Jane Austen, so much more restrained, who simply declared swimming ‘delightful’. She found the combination of sea air and sea water ‘nearly infallible’ and ‘a match for every disorder’. To the Romans, swimming was a most manly, heroic occupation, so much so that they defined an ignorant man as one who ‘neither knows how to read or swim’. Caligula, the cruel and brutally wanton Roman emperor, deemed himself a god but his contemporaries whispered he was a wimp — behind his back, presumably — because he couldn’t manage a front crawl or even a doggy-paddle. I came across a similar attitude when I lived in London and finally plucked up the courage to swim in the famous, natural, spring-fed ponds on Hampstead Heath. The exclusive ladies pond is in a picture-perfect setting, surrounded by trees and wild flowers. But I was scared to go in. The problem was I couldn’t see the bottom. The water was so black and deep, my thoughts would turn black and ominous too, imagining drowning and wondering how many rats were lurking in the murky shadows. But one day, the local indoor pool I used was unexpectedly closed. So I braved the pond. And it was a revelation. I felt I was swimming through silk. I never knew water could be so soft and I forgot about the rats and the unknown depths. And with all the passion of a convert I became so keen on the fresh water and splashing about with ducks I was determined to swim there all year round. Poet Lord Byron (left) was a prodigious swimmer, once crossing the four-mile Hellespont from Asia to Europe, while Jane Austen praised the sea air and water as 'a match for every disorder' I bought neoprene gloves and shoes and, as autumn came and the temperature dropped, I invested in a wet-suit. Because although there is something to be said for the way you emerge from cold water stinging and tingling as if heated by a feverish drug, I’m not hardy enough for swimming through liquid ice. But, unfortunately, I was not allowed to wear my new wetsuit — ‘not in the spirit of the ponds’, I was told by the strict Hampstead matriarchs who police it. And my passion faltered and I had to wait again for warmer weather. The coldness of our climate meant that, for centuries in Britain, swimming in the wild for pleasure was considered close to madness. The sea and rivers were regarded as sources of disease rather than pleasure. And the Church saw swimming as a rather sinful pursuit, possibly because Romans treated it as the opportunity for more erotic activities than a few hale and hearty lengths. But then, at the end of the 18th century, George III gave swimming the royal stamp of approval by taking dips in the sea off Weymouth, accompanied apparently by a band who struck up God Save The King every time he popped his head out of the water. In 1824, Britain’s first swimming society was formed by a group of Old Etonians. The David Camerons and Boris Johnsons of their day initiated non-swimmers by taking them out onto the River Thames and chucking them in. The Victorians had more gentle ways of learning to swim. A Boys Own Paper of 1879 suggested learning from frogs — by catching one, putting it in a bowl of water and then lying your body across a table and imitating the way it moved. George III brought swimming to fashion in England after years of scepticism from prudish members of the church . Whatever methods people learned to swim they were effective and, as more people took to the waters, something had to be done, in the name of modesty, about the habit of swimming naked. A cover-up campaign began, much to the annoyance of Francis Kilvert, a West Country curate who, in 1872, complained about the ‘detestable custom of bathing in drawers’. He loved ‘the delicious feeling of freedom in stripping in the open air and running down naked to the sea’. Forced to put on underwear (red and white striped) to conceal himself, he complained that: ‘If ladies don’t like to see men naked, why don’t they keep away from the sight?’ Indeed given the hysteria generated by Poldark actor Aidan Turner’s quick Cornish dip, watching men swimming seems to be a pleasure that has never dimmed. Personally, I hate being seen swimming, though others clearly don’t. On the nearest beach to me, the determinedly old-fashioned Aldeburgh on the Suffolk coast, I watch doughty local residents wander through the town in great towelling robes for a morning dip, proudly showing off bodies leathered and tanned by years of immersion in the sea. They are following in the footsteps of the composer Benjamin Britten, the town’s most famous resident, who extolled the virtues of cold water ‘just to wake you up’. On a good day, he’d manage as many as five ‘bathes’, as he called them, fitting them in between rehearsals and lunch, as well as late at night in the moonlight. His love affair with water lasted through his whole life. He composed the piano piece Early Morning Bathe, which captures all the initial pain and ultimate pleasure of a swim off the English coast — that ‘it’s lovely when you’re in’ feeling. But the problem, for me, is the indignity of actually getting in and out of the sea. It’s bad enough trying to keep your feet as you stagger in. But, unless it is unusually calm, there’s not a hope of emerging from the surf with the composure of bikini-clad Ursula Andress in the Bond film Dr No. As I get out, the waves can be so pebble-filled-heavy I’m often hurled flat on my face and have to scrabble over the stones on my stomach. But the humiliation of looking like a seal heaving itself onto dry land is worth it for the joy of that swim. So I will continue to confront the North Sea, take delight when the temperature climbs a few degrees as we head into summer in the weeks ahead and then grit my teeth again as it plummets back into winter. Because I know from experience that, whatever the season, once I’m swimming, I’m reminded, however briefly, how wonderful it is to be alive.
target: Sarah Foot began swimming outside after a dip on Hampstead Heath .
  Now goes for regular dips in the bracing 8C waters of the North Sea .
  Says nothing beats the 'silky smooth' feeling of swimming in cold water .