Words by Joe Minihane & Illustrations by Marina Marcolin - first published in our England magazine.
“There was a time for us too when Suffolk and the whole of the Waveney Valley was terra incognita, like the hills, woods and ponds around Thoreau’s cabin at Walden.”
Roger Deakin, Notes from Walnut Tree Farm
I walk across Outney Common, boots squelching through churned up mud, as a herd of cows throws me nonchalant glances from fifty paces. There’s the caw of invisible ravens, the twirling song of a skylark, the silent wingbeats of a kestrel on high, watching something unseen in the tall grass.
I am here to swim in the Waveney, a river that arcs in a deep meander around this open space. It’s late April and despite the spring sun burning off the dawn mist, a chill breeze lingers. Where the river forks and a row of timber steps are nailed into an overhanging horse chestnut, I slip into the cool water. Wavelets slap across my chest as I tack out into the deep, enjoying the frog’s eye view. This is my favourite place, on the trail of a man who made this valley, this county, his home. A man whose writing gave rise to a new understanding of the natural world.
Roger Deakin was a swimmer, writer, woodsman, filmmaker and eccentric. He made his life at Walnut Tree Farm, a once-ruined Elizabethan farmhouse in the Suffolk village of Mellis. Surrounded by a medieval moat and acres of unkempt fields and woodland, it was a base for his adventures both local and far reaching.
In the years since his passing in 2006, Deakin and his works have become cornerstones of a resurgent nature writing scene in the UK. 1999’s Waterlog, an ode to the delights of illicit swims in the country’s hidden waterways, is now seen as totemic, kickstarting a wider appreciation of wild swimming. The posthumously released Wildwood revealed Deakin’s deep knowledge of and adoration for forests and trees, such passions also evident in his diaries, released as Notes from Walnut Tree Farm in 2008.
My own connection to Deakin came through a shared love of wild swimming. Waterlog was, and still is, my bible. The author’s impish sense of fun, love of outing rules and understanding of the natural world spoke to me at a time when I was struggling with anxiety. I made it my mission to swim in all of the places Deakin had visited, a project which became my own book, Floating.
“The Waveney is a secret river, by turns lazy and agile, dashing over shallow beds of gravel, then suddenly quiet, dignified and deep.”
Roger Deakin, Waterlog
In the three years since the end of my journey, I have missed diving into Deakin’s world. Hence I am here, swimming in a pool on the Waveney that he described as “a perfect pike pool”, all submerged tree roots and uneven banks. The water seems like the ideal way to see the world as Deakin did. He speaks of becoming part of the scene when swimming in rivers, of being at one with the creatures that make it their home, of gaining a sense of perspective unattainable on dry land.
From where I swim, the banks look impossibly high, the only sights a distant mansion and the course of the channel where it twists its way towards Bungay, Geldeston and the North Sea beyond. Low to the water, the breeze has dropped and the sun warms my back as I swim a lazy breaststroke. Deakin called this “the naturalists’ stroke”, all the better for the swimmer to see their surroundings. I can hear the whirr of gold finches. The kestrel I saw earlier drops, hovers and drops again, rising once more without prey. I picture pike hiding in the depths, waiting to bite, and make for the bank.
“This was the Wissey, a river so secret that even its name sounds like a whisper: a river of intoxicating beauty that appears to have avoided the late twentieth century altogether.”
Roger Deakin, Waterlog
Across the county border, on the edge of Norfolk’s sandy Brecklands, I follow the barbed wire fence of a MOD ring range. The late afternoon light is filtering through Scots pines and humanity seems to be elsewhere, disinterested, unaware of this spectacular little corner of England.
At a humpbacked bridge, where the paved road fades to dirt, the Wissey emerges from what Deakin called “the never never land” of the adjacent ring range, pouring into a swirling weir pool. I wade over slick, shelving pebbles into the white water, turn, and let its force ease out the knots in my back, before sliding into the shallows, willing myself to stay beneath the icy surface.
Because the ring range isn’t troubled by intensive farming and agribusiness, the Wissey has retained a magical feel, that same “intoxicating beauty” Deakin observed 20 years ago. I wade out yet again as a tawny owl glides overhead. Deakin had an unerring ability to find and share sublime locations, especially those surrounding his Mellis moat. The fact that so many remain pristine feels like a rare gift, unchanging calm in the modern storm.
“I had come down the path along the disintegrating cliffs from the magnificent ruined church at Covehithe. Each year the path moves further inland across the fields because great hunks of England keep falling away in winter storms.”
Roger Deakin, Waterlog
The light patter of April rain echoes inside my hood. I turn my back on the mossy walls of Covehithe Church and follow the path around farm fields to where small cliffs slip onto the sandy beach. It is late morning, the day after my blissful Wissey dip.
Covehithe is the fastest eroding stretch of English coastline with around five metres claimed by the sea each year. As storms continue to batter Suffolk every winter, it’s likely the church and its 14th century ruins will be under the churning waves by the middle of the century.
Deakin writes in Waterlog of a ley line he drew from his moat to the coast just south of here. He stopped along its length to swim in pools near Eye and the lake in the grounds of Heveningham Hall. But instead I am drawn to this ethereal place, where Deakin swam in the now inaccessible Benacre Broad. Today, an electric fence tacked out around its perimeter protects ground-nesting birds. I walk along the beach, where fallen trees lay lop-sided, whitened by the sun, awaiting their futures as submarine habitats. As the rain intensifies, I give in to the water’s call and run towards the roughed up rollers.
Turning to look back to the shore, I see my first swifts of the year, their unmistakable whistle catching on the growing wind. The waves rise and a sharp slap of salty water brings me back into the moment. “One of the beauties of this flat land of Suffolk is that when you’re swimming off the shore and the waves come up, it subsides from view and you could be miles out in the North Sea,” writes Deakin towards the end of Waterlog. I feel that here, now, and wish he was with me to enjoy the dip, to bob as a seal, to revel in the water and light he so hymned.
