Wild Swimming with sea monsters

We were a very mixed group, some of us had done it before, some of us claimed to have made 15 metre jumps, others barely fitted into a wetsuit. The group in the wetsuits and buoyancy aids. The Thrillseekers set off closely followed by a second group dressed in windproofs, eating ice cream and carrying cameras. The Spectators.

We were all in Anglesey for a chilled out weekend of doing everything and nothing but the one thing we had organised was coasteering on Sunday morning with Llanberis based Boulder Adventures. Coasteering is a mixture of open water swimming and scrambling around a section of coastline.

Our group was presented with its first test when we had to divide into two groups of 8. There were a few minutes of mild confusion on the narrow coastal path until the instructors finally got fed up and went in opposite directions. The Thrillseekers magically divided naturally between themselves and just in time for the Spectators to take their vantage points on the cliff top.

By the time we got to the waters edge we were rather warm and took the plunge voluntarily. Cheered on by the Spectators we swam across inlets and got cajouled into making bigger and bigger jumps. In reality we only travelled a short distance but we felt that we had travelled much much further. By the time we reached the final swim back into PorthDafarch our two groups had merged. We shared stories of how we had jumped off 10 metre cliffs, made daring leaps across churning chasms and battled against angry sea monsters.