The Peastacks: ‘Cold Water’ Excerpt
The following is an excerpt taken with exclusive permission from Jack’s new book: Cold Water. This exciting new family adventure takes the reader from London’s lidos to Iceland’s Atlantic bays. It is part exploration of why people love to swim in the cold, part memoir of four years' worth of Jack’s own winter swims with his family.
In this section, we join one of the wildest rides any of the Wild Swimming Brothers ever had in open water. One early morning, Jack and Calum were driven by local RIB driver, Dale, into the mouth of The Peastacks (a short boat ride out from Saint Peter Port in Guernsey). While the sun inched over the offing, veteran local sea swimmer, Jacqui, clutched her goggles and hopped off the boat, leading the brothers off into the cold saline and churned froth…
‘Cold Water’ is currently available for pledges on Hardback copies and other exclusive rewards, funding via the award-winning Unbound platform.
The Peastacks
Now, our dinghy slowed as we neared the coast. At once we were dwarfed by this cluster of rocky tors and buttresses, hewn by the waves. Dale cut the engine and the dingy bobbed a few hundred metres from the headland. We slowly began to unfasten our life jackets and peel down our overalls. The cliffs were undercut by a slope of steep rock, with a shingle beach below. Intersected sinews of harder rock held the gullies and channels together. Between the stacks, there were several entrances, like gullets, each able to swallow and disgorge large swells, swept inward from the sea. Inside those gullies, we saw a criss-crossing onslaught of powerful waves. White froth blasted against their serrated edges, which rose to varying heights, like the spine of a stegosaurus.
On calmer days, this was a popular training ground. Many locals talked of making that manic dash, from one side of The Peastacks to the other. You simply had to pick out the calmest passage, dodge any breakers and swim in the troughs as the swells rolled by. Today, the waters looked rougher than usual though – even Jacqui seemed a little concerned. While I was close to getting on both knees and swearing I’d build the Virgin Mary another church.
A breeze pricked the small hairs on my neck. My skin turned to gooseflesh. It was a muggy dawn and still cold out there. What’s more, we were about to hit the water in skins. No wetsuits. No caps. All we had were goggles, swim suits and a tow float each, strapped around our waists. Apart from that, there was nothing between us and the saltwater.
“We’ll just go towards the main entrance,” said Jacqui, “Find a little place to stop.”
It was too late to turn back, or chicken out. We rolled out the rubber dinghy at intervals and sank into the gloom. When we came up, Jacqui had already started to reassure us. I guess, she wanted to build our confidence – maybe even her own. It was just difficult to know what to expect and impossible to turn back. Once you entered that gully, you had to keep swimming to the other side, before it spat you out. So, we began our crawl towards the headland and stopped when we hit the first channel. At that point, we took a minute and trod water as we checked in with each other. Waves rolled out from the rocky gullet and belched us further out with each new barrage. At first, we swam with our heads up, hemmed in between two stacks as breakers burst and funnelled in from the mouth ahead of us. Walls of white froth spilled in and over us. We bowed our heads and started to dig in with a frantic crawl, kicking our feet and spitting water between our lips. Jacqui held her position up front and Calum was behind her. I was a little further back, with James in my wake, trying to wield a GoPro. We checked on each other as best we could. At times, the chaos set in and it was like trying to swim backwards up a water chute. Sighting was best done underwater. In this way, you could spot boulders after waves came in and the rollers smoothed. Often, we used anything hard underfoot as a launching point. Foam eddied all around us. We bent our legs and frog-leaped forward, trying to gain more metres in the seething murk. Looking up, I saw the stacks that teetered over us. Speared rocks jutted inwards from both sides.
After that we reached a natural intersection. Waves piled in from every side and filled this rough basin, with a lone rock at the centre. It was the point of no return. The decision had to be made – would we press on and risk the crossing?
By that point we’d all stomached a few salty mouthfuls. Fatigue was a pressing reality. Deep body instincts urged us to turn back.
“Are you happy to go?” said Jacqui, finding a moment to talk between being dunked, “This is quite rough. Do you want to do this?”
We knew the dinghy had already driven round and was waiting on the other side of the headland. We had to swim through The Peastacks to reach it. That was the only way to get out on our own power and clamber back to safety up the ladder. If we turned back, we’d have to cling onto a boulder somewhere and wait to be rescued.
It really didn’t seem like a viable option.
“If you think it’s okay” – the best answer we could give.
In short, we trusted Jacqui and to her credit, she timed each frenzied sprint to perfection. Puffing out her cheeks, she turned and ducked just as a monstrous surge of water tumbled into us. These swells were a foot or so high at times. When they passed we could float and catch our breath. We also felt much steadier under the surface, submerged between strokes. All of us felt an urge to swim onwards. Yet Jacqui collected her thoughts and counted out the wave sets. She knew not to rush off after the first big swell, when we might’ve risked it. Sure enough, the next wave was almost double the size. It blasted hard against the lone rock and whipped the basin into a lumpy whorl. Another wave hit in quick succession. Again, we swam hard to hold our position and even clenched handfuls of kelp and clung to the rocks. Then the fourth wave rolled in with less force – smaller than the first.
Jacqui called out and we all gawped at each other and gritted our teeth.
It struck me that the only thing we cared about was using that window and getting out of there. This led to the fastest crawl any of us had ever swum. We dove out as the swell flattened and kicked out at double-speed and flung our arms at the water as hard as we could. At one point, I broached the surface and had just enough time to exclaim: ‘oh God’. Before I was submerged under another tidal collision. Again, we swallowed more seawater and cut our hands and feet on the rocks. Yet Jacqui knew The Peastacks from years of swimming there. Her wake was a lifeline, which bubbled between us and threaded into our clawing fingers. She was the reason we made it through that hellish wash – a 1,319-metre swim that took us 28:31 minutes.
When we reached the dinghy, we hauled ourselves onboard and sat hunched on the rubber prow. It took us a few minutes to suck in enough air and process what just happened. I felt wired. Lost for words. Later, Jacqui told me I was hard to read leading up to that swim. She said she wanted to assess our levels of comfort. It was normal for me to be tight-lipped before the plunge though. I always hunted for solid ground within myself. Calum was the opposite to me. When he was nervous, he talked and sought advice and found comfort in others.
Our ship captain, Dale, grinned at us as we towelled off and pulled on our overalls. It looked like he’d enjoyed the morning show.
“Better you than me,” was all he said.
Somehow, Calum was spat out from the gully without any scrapes – “Thank you Dale and Jacqui,” he said, “Swallowed a lot of seawater. No rock bumps, really?”
“Plenty of people bumps,” said Jacqui and we recalled various slaps, elbows and kicks, when we were jostled in the currents.
Once we were dressed and in our seats, Dale drove us out around the headland. We skimmed over deep waters and swerved back towards the harbour. Seabirds swooped down alongside us and dolphins surfaced in the distance, near the sea-facing cliffs of the east coast. For me, that was when the endorphins began to kick in. I felt suddenly attached to this place I’d known nothing about. It was here you had access to the simplest pleasures, like body surfing waves, or searching for crabs on the sea floor. On the Island, everyone seemed to value their life aquatic. Every swimmer had their own toiler-tale to share, from years of charging into gullies and meeting shadowy creatures in the deep. We were lucky to have had such an unfiltered experience and swore we’d both be back someday. Jacqui and Jennifer said they’d be more than happy to dunk us in the briny again, which sprawls on the Guernsey doorstep.
Finally, we went for one last breakfast at our hotel and filled up for the return flight. I think we all felt like weathered sailors in that pristine dining area – there was such a contrast between a warm meal, polished silverware and an hour of being swatted from all angles by the bruising seas of the Bailiwick…