This episode of In At The Deep End is sponsored by Brulo Beer.
Mermaid. Adventurer. Swim coach.
Lindsey Cole has cycled across continents, walked a thousand miles along the rabbit-proof fence in Australia and swum the length of the Thames in a mermaid tail to campaign against plastic pollution. Somewhere on the way she rescued a drowning cow and ended up on page three of The Sun. It sounds made up. It isn’t.
That Thames swim led Lindsey somewhere she never planned. Strangers began messaging with offers of a warm bed and a favourite swim spot, and Lindsey followed the invitations on a six-month journey around Britain and Ireland. Her new book, Swimming with Strangers, tells that story. In this episode she talks to Salim about the people she met, what the water strips away and why the wild swimming community may be one of the best things going.
Together, Salim and Lindsey explore:
How a Saturday coaching job at 14 grew into a lifelong love of teaching swimming
Why swimming as a mermaid is far harder than it looks, and what it takes to swim a whole river in a monofin
The unlikely chain of events that took Lindsey from the rabbit-proof fence to a plastic-filled sea in Bali and then to the Thames
How a cold-water swim community can turn strangers into friends, and how the invitations she received shaped her open water journey around Britain and Ireland
What the swimming world strips away, and why shared water can bring together people who might never otherwise talk
Why sewage in our rivers may be one issue everyone can agree on
Lindsey’s coaching approach, from pushing off the wall like a rocket to bringing play into your stroke
Taking the unscripted route through life, from Ironman triathlons to the Edinburgh Fringe
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