Wild Woman Swimming Profits to St Luke’s Hospice

For ‘warm, funny and fearless’ Lynne Roper of Mary Tavy, a paramedic who was passionate about outdoor swimming, ‘passing it down the line’ didn’t need to end at her death. “People can swim and take me with them,” she said.

Lynne did not mean this literally. Living with a brain tumour, she knew her condition was terminal, but she was determined to see the adventures she recorded about her sixty-plus wild swims published to inspire others to swim wild, ‘read water’ and take educated risks as she did.

St Luke’s cared for Lynne at Turnchapel before sadly, she passed away in 2016, and it was while she was in our care she met writer Tanya Shadrick, who she entrusted with her diaries for posthumous publication.

Thanks to Tanya’s tireless editing, the diaries became the book Lynne had envisioned, ‘Wild Woman Swimming – a Journal of Westcountry Waters’. Not only was it published in 2018 – following consultation with Lynne’s parents, Mike and Jenny Roper – in 2019 the book went on to be longlisted for the prestigious Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing.

In keeping with Lynne’s wishes, profits from the sale of the book are benefiting St Luke’s, and recently Mike and Jenny, together with Lynne’s brother Dave and her friend Sophie Pierce – who wrote the introduction to the book – visited Turnchapel to present Community Fundraiser Pete Ward with a cheque for £1,000.

Mike and Jenny said: “We will be forever grateful to St Luke’s and all the doctors and nurses for the tremendous, loving care our daughter received in the last six weeks of her life.”

Peter said: “St Luke’s was privileged to care for Lynne in the last weeks of her life, and we are so grateful to her parents for this generous donation that will make a difference to more families who need our help during a very challenging time.”

Wild Woman Swimming – a book for ‘outdoor swimmers, nature lovers and all who prize the wild and free’ – is published by The Selkie Press.

Text from St Luke’s Hospice Plymouth reproduced with permission.

Wild Woman Swimming longlisted in The Wainwright Prize 2019

The prestigious Wainwright Golden Beer Book Prize – which celebrates the best books about nature, the outdoors and UK travel – has included the posthumously-published Wild Woman Swimming: A Journal of West Country by Lynne Roper (the only book from editor Tanya Shadrick’s Selkie Press) in its 2019 longlist.

Celebrating its sixth year, The Wainwright Golden Beer Book Prize is awarded annually to the book which most successfully reflects the ethos of renowned nature writer Alfred Wainwright’s work, to inspire readers to explore the outdoors and to nurture a respect for the natural world.

You can find out more about the longlisted authors and books, and read chapter extracts, on The Wainwright Prize website.

The longlisting has attracted a new and growing readership for the book, as well as strong interest in the book’s moving backstory: its publication keeping a promise made by Tanya Shadrick to fellow West Country woman Lynne, at a single meeting at the author’s hospice in the month before she died.

You can enjoy regular short extracts from Wild Woman Swimming by following @WildWomanSwims on Twitter.

‘My shape has different meanings in water’: Lynne Roper on body image after illness

Here is Wild Woman Swimming: A Journal of West Country Waters author Lynne Roper’s inspiring meditation on the soulfulness of wild swimming, and body image after serious illness:

‘In December of 2010, shortly after the unexpected and shocking death of a very dear friend, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I hadn’t swum regularly for a year or so, and following my initial recovery from bilateral mastectomy in March 2011 I began going to the pool to increase my mobility and regain my fitness. I soon became terminally bored; my mind and emotions continued to churn around in one place like a maelstrom. So I began swimming outdoors and before long I was hooked; wild swimming had become my obsession.

Why did wild swimming, which I’d done off and on all my life and always loved and taken for granted, suddenly become so central to my life and so cathartic? I think it has to do with being alive, and needing to feel alive. It’s a spiritual experience, sliding through wild water.

Initially I wore breast forms in my swimsuit, afraid of feeling wrong as much as I feared looking weird. But soon I stopped caring – my shape has different meanings and a different function in water than in air. Fish and aquatic mammals don’t have dugs that you can see. Unlike in our airified culture where breasts have assumed an inflated cartoon-porn emphasis, what’s fetishised about fish, dolphins and whales is their sleekness, variousness of form and graceful movement through the turbulent medium of water regardless of their size, blubber content, or perceived beauty.

My body is at home in water; free, wild, elemental. Worries dissolve, my mind is liberated; thoughts flow and glide and play like dolphins. My soul swims wild.’

Get your copy of Wild Woman Swimming: A Journal of West Country Waters from The Selkie Press for £8.99 (+ 1.50 P&P) or order from any local bookstore or online bookseller.