Swimming With Strangers: An Accidental Six-Month Journey Through Britain And Ireland's Wild Swimming

Swimming with Strangers is the journey that began when Lindsey Cole stopped asking Where should I live? and started asking Who wants to go for a swim? Lindsey had spent years chasing adventures. She'd walked across Australia, cycled to the South Africa World Cup and swum the River Thames in a mermaid tail. But when she finally felt ready to settle down, she realised she had no idea where she belonged. As her last single friend got engaged, Lindsey felt lost and left behind. Then her Thames swim went viral after she rescued a drowning cow, and messages began arriving from strangers inviting her for swims and places to stay. Perhaps if she cycled to the Scottish Winter Swimming Championships, staying with swimmers along the way, she might discover somewhere that could feel like home? One invitation became another, and soon Lindsey was cycling thousands of miles across Britain and Ireland, from the most northern beach of Shetland to the Isles of Scilly, swimming in rivers, lochs and seas with people she'd never met, discovering hidden corners of her own country and an extraordinary community stitched together by cold water. It was only meant to take two weeks, but for six months, wherever an invitation came from, Lindsey went. Warm, joyful and uplifting, Swimming with Strangers is a celebration of wild swimming, ordinary kindness and the remarkable people who make Britain's cold water feel like home. AUTHOR: Lindsey Cole is a storyteller, writer and speaker whose curiosity rarely lets an idea stay small for long. She has written and illustrated the children's books The Mermaid and the Cow and The Mermaid, the Otter and the Big Poo, inspired by her mermaid adventure swims campaigning for cleaner rivers. Swimming with Strangers is her first book for adults. Lindsey lives in Bristol, where she coaches outdoor swimming, stuffs her pockets with biscuits to flirt with dogs, and is occasionally spotted in a gold sequin catsuit after performing her mermaid kids' shows, or heading to a day rave. That's why she's still in Bristol. Everything goes.