From: 155 Spring 2022
Author: Alison Cobb
All over Britain people have responded to lockdown by taking up so-called wild swimming, which might be better called cold water swimming. No longer is it only on a hot summer day that you swim gently across the oxen ford just upstream of Medley boat station ending up lying in the shallowest part beside Port Meadow, gazing up at horses cooling their hooves in the water beside you. Every day now smart cars arrive in Binsey early in the morning carrying people (more women than men: maybe some of them Freemen) often wearing special ankle-length camouflage coats lined with terry-towelling. They strip off to their bathing suits and no matter what the weather is, get into the Isis (the River Thames is called the Isis here) and swim. They have been seen cracking the ice to get in. They say they get an endorphin buzz from it. They laugh and chatter, keep a social distance, do no harm, annoy nobody, leave no litter and drive carefully home.
They have had an amazing effect on the river at Port Meadow. They have noticed how filthy the water is, made so by storm sewage overflows. Some have been made ill by their swimming, and discovered that the bacteria in the water (sometimes twice the recommended safety threshold allowed by law) come from human faeces, and not agricultural run-off. This untreated sewage is legally allowed to run into the river ‘in exceptional circumstances such as high rainfall’ from the Cassington waste water treatment works just two miles upstream. They noted that raw sewage flowed into the Thames for 230 hours in 2021. They decided to do something about it.
5000 people signed the Oxford Rivers Project petition to ask the Environment Agency to support Thames Water and the Oxford City Council in demanding that the Government insists that the water is safe to swim in. Thames Water and the City Council agreed. The local MP, Layla Moran, on behalf of the protestors spoke about it in Parliament. She asked that the Wolvercote Mill Stream be designated as a Bathing Water, and this is now under way. She mentioned that France has 573 such waters, Italy 73 and Germany 36, while in England we have one, on the River Wharfe at Ilkley. Oxford’s Bathing Water, if approved, will be the second. The water must then be subjected to a strict testing regime from May to September to ensure it is safe to swim in (the wild swimmers quite rightly want it tested all year round) and signage put up to show the status to the public.
A huge meeting was held on the Meadow on January 23rd, strongly encouraged and supported by the Ranger, Julian Cooper, and our MP. At least 400 people turned up, many armed with stunning rude and witty banners. Even Layla quoted A A Milne, Winnie the Pooh and ‘Poohsticks’ in Parliament. We got coverage on the BBC and in the Oxford Mail.
How does this affect the Freemen? The new designated Bathing Water will be in Wolvercote, just upstream of the whole length of the river at Port Meadow upon which the Freemen have ancient fishing rights. Having visited this, which was the old so-called bathing site, we saw that it already has platforms on which changing huts once stood, and it would be little effort to upgrade them, and in the car park there are working lavatories. The City Council is talking of putting in showers. None of this is on land over which the Freemen have grazing rights. Our fishing rights start from just below where the Bathing Water rejoins the main river, and continue down the whole length of Port Meadow. We believe there are no water treatment areas below Cassington on either side of this bit of the river, so we would have rights to quite exceptionally clean water. I wrote to Layla reminding her of the Freemen’s ancient rights, and that within them a major breeding ground of the barbel on Port Meadow is just downstream from The Perch. I said we would want the river clean enough for the famous wide range of excellent fish that live in it. She wrote back asking if she could use that information.
In her speech she said that the rivers of England should no longer be ‘low-cost avenues for getting rid of sewage and for that matter, biodiversity along with it’. Every Freeman would agree with her, and we surely all want this campaign to succeed.