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Set on Dartmoor and the Devon coasts, the book records the adventures of visionary wild swimmer and west country NHS paramedic, the late Lynne Roper. For five years, between surviving breast cancer and dying of a brain tumour in 2016, Lynne took daily swims in tors, ponds, rivers and reservoirs (sometimes in boisterous company; often alone, in quiet communion with nature).
Longlisted for the prestigious 2019 Wainwright Prize for UK nature and travel writing, and recommended by the Outdoor Swimming Society, the book has an extraordinary backstory. Selkie Press founder Tanya Shadrick met Lynne Roper only once in the month before her death: a former hospice scribe and writer of the outside, Tanya recognised the power of her fellow west country woman’s writing about the natural world (and the close-knit communities that form when people gather together in our countryside) and committed to editing her work. This book is the result.
Lynne’s words and the story behind the book’s publication have attracted sold-out audiences at Kendal Mountain Festival and Faversham Literary Festival. It is a book that inspires those who encounter it to seek for themselves the wild and free: a book for wild swimmers, walkers and nature lovers alike.
Devon paramedic Lynne Roper began swimming outdoors in 2011 while recovering from a double mastectomy. Warm, funny and fearless, she was soon at the heart of The Outdoor Swimming Society, inspiring others to swim wild, 'read water' and take educated risks as she did. For five years, until a brain tumour made swimming and writing impossibly hard, Lynne recorded her swims in over sixty wild waters.
Editor Tanya Shadrick promised to publish the diaries after a single meeting with the author in the month before she died.
