My Swim Story Samantha Shelley
Once upon a time a girl called Samantha Shelley shared her swim story with Outdoor Swimmer...
Once upon a time there was a girl who liked water. Paddling pools, puddles and ponds, she was not fussy. Samantha, for that was the little girl’s name, loved them all.
Her mother would never understand the joy that splashing, wading and wallowing brought to the child. Her mother only saw clothes that needed drying, colds that might be caught and danger. But as everybody knows, there is no cure for an infatuation with water, so Samantha’s mother did what any good mother does and taught her child to swim.
The local swimming pool became the new place of worship. The girl loved every single eye stinging, ear infecting and verruca catching moment of it. She progressed through the milestones. The 100m, 500m, 1km and 3km badges were sewn proudly upon her chlorine bleached swimming costume.
But as children grow their tastes change and this one was no exception. She left the
pool and gravitated towards the sea.
The self-conscious teenager jumped waves with the joy that only the life-affirming waters of the North Sea can bring. Then a hot summer on a Greek island brought snorkelling and a whole new level of heaven. Sweeping over submerged cliffs and swooping through shoals of fish is as close to flying as a girl can get.
One day she left home to go to university, where she studied something sensible and dry. But the Scottish lochs and the Lakeland tarns soon enticed her back. By 21 Samantha had ditched her science career and embarked on becoming a professional water lover. She needed qualifications and began with the Bronze Medallion. Other tickets soon followed: windsurf instructor, kayak coach, scuba diver, power boat operator. The world was her oyster.
The years passed and the young woman travelled the world in search of fun and adventure. She surfed in Australia, windsurfed in Greece, dived on the Great
Barrier Reef, kayaked in New Zealand and water-skied in America. She got bitten by a fur seal, stood on many a sea urchin and was slapped by a multitude of penguins.
She even had the great honour of teaching Ivanka Trump to mud wrestle on a summer camp in Maine. Life could not be better.
And then one day tragedy struck…. Samantha awoke to find that time had passed. She looked in the mirror and could not believe her eyes. She had forgotten the only rule that counts, to do what excites you because nothing else matters.
The middle-aged woman thought about the girl that used to be. Somewhere along the way she had forgotten to swim and have fun.
How could this have happened? It was time to hit the midlife reset button.
She decided to head to the sea. In fact, she thought it would be a great idea to swim all the way around Mallorca. She was right, it was a fantastic idea and the next chapter could begin. Samantha went swimming and lived happily ever after. The end.
Eradicating American mink from Britain is becoming tangible after four years of baiting traps with their scent in Norfolk and Suffolk has created a mink-free zone. They are blamed for the population collapse of water voles and seabirds. Yet, water voles have declined because of habitat change as well as mink predation, and seabirds are under pressure from loss of fishing grounds and Avian flu.
Brought to Britain to be farmed for their fur, deliberate release by activists and occasional escapes have led to resident mink in our waterways. Experiments on fur farm mink found access to water was a resource they would pay the highest price for by pushing against weighted doors. When access to water was removed, their stress level rose as much as when they were denied food. Mink are sentient animals that love to swim. It isn’t their fault that human lust for their fur introduced them outside of their native range.
If we took responsibility for our role in their spread, and practised conservation with compassion, are there solutions other than trapping and killing mink? Could mink traps be baited with food laced with contraceptives? Could we make more effort to restore habitats so that water voles and seabirds are able to tolerate the predator pressure of mink? Conserving biodiversity and being compassionate can be compatible.