Swimming with Strangers : An accidental six-month journey through Britain and Ireland’s wild swimming communities in search of home

Swimming with Strangers is the accidental journey that began when Lindsey Cole stopped asking Where should I live? and started asking Who wants to go for a swim? Warm, joyful and uplifting, it is a celebration of wild swimming, ordinary kindness and the remarkable people who make Britain’s cold water feel like home.

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.