"Film character busters!! Put Paul McCartney in a blender and drink what comes out: B"
We waited in silence.
"Beetlejuice!!" Brother the elder roared triumphantly, answering his own unique brand of brain-teaser as we ate our breakfast.
So here I am, still in Devon with the family. After the last wild swim, we had to find more. The previous one was my first, and already, I was hooked...
We drove out onto Dartmoor, to a little stone bridge over the river Teign, near Castle Drogo, the last castle to be built in Britain. It was built for a merchant millionaire named Julius Drewe, who is often described as eccentric, and who gave himself the title Baron Drogo de Teigne. In the stretch of river below the castle, he built a series of artificial salmon leaps, consisting of three square pools cascading one into another, forming a long, calm pool above the leaps, from which salmon can be fished, and a divinely chaotic, natural river system surrounded by lush green forest below. This is why we were here.
We parked up, went through the gate on the other side of the road, and followed the public footpath alongside the river. As we walked, the sun came out and started to blaze away in a sky rapidly emptying of clouds, and when we entered the forest, the sunlight dappling through the canopy onto the river created a wonderful, mesmerising myriad of hues. When we found the leaps, we set up camp (not literally), and I found an enormous rock downstream of the leaps, behind which I changed into my swimming shorts. I wondered whether the rock was the same one mentioned in the Wild Swimming book as "the rocking Logan Stone thought to belong to the druids".
I joined both brothers back at the leaps, where we got in the water at the calm pool above the leaps, with, shall we say, varying degrees of ease. I'll mention no names (In an unrelated topic, however, one family camping holiday in France, years ago, the campsite had a big swimming pool with a chute. My younger brother was terrified, and so didn't go down the chute, until, as he had decided quite early on, the very last day we were there. After finally trying the chute, he wanted to stay for two more weeks, and so regretted leaving the experience to the very last day).
Anyway, the river water in the top pool was, it has to be said, quite brisk, but absolutely rejuvenating! The water was dark, and tinged red, and I immersed myself, once again feeling the epochal, instinctive, evolutionary urge to submerge and resultant exultant feeling; an evolutionary ecstasy! We also annoyed a Fly fisherman.
Dad asked him "Do you catch much salmon in here?"
"Try to." Came the grumbled reply, with a perturbed glance in our direction.
I'm not saying for certain whether or not what happened next was loaded with malicious intent, but this is what happened: His fly and hook landed and got tangled up in the vegetation on the bank, dangerously close to where we were swimming. We offered to detach it. "No, it's ok." came the grumbled reply. I might have imagined it, but there seemed to be a slight air of I-would've-gotten-away-with-it-too-if-it-wasn't-for-you-pesky-kids in his demeanour.
Anyway, the leaps!! Swimming, or rather falling, down them, feet first, is fun, and going underwater in there gives you a natural high, the unconscious forces roaring around your head, pummeling your muscles. Even those, I noticed, used to keep you standing upright, which don't normally move around much other than in the directions they naturally act. But sheer elemental forces oscillate and pummel, and violently massage your whole being...Absolutely epic!! I plunged my face into the falling water, and the roar-hum I heard under there (I could breathe in the pocket of air behind the water) was absolutely unique. I was reminded of a quote from the C.S Lewis book "Out of the silent planet". A Malacandrian life-form named Hyoi the Hross says to the protagonist:
"There I drank life, because death was in the pool. That was the best of drinks."
What I shouted to my brothers before this, though, was slightly less profound.
"Remember what the 7UP can said!! Life's a blast when you dive right in!"
The exit from the lowest of the three pools is a concrete slide, the effect of which combines with the concentrated forces of the river to thrust you downstream like a champagne cork, tumbling over boulders and logs and stones. I sustained a few bumps and cuts and bruises!! Also, I bumped my head on the concrete bottom of the top pool when I went down it whilst sitting in an inflatable rubber ring. I threw the ring into the next pool, and it fell down into the river below, so I tumbled down the cascades to save it. I finally grabbed it, jumped in it and sailed downstream, away from the water's roar, to bathe in the green light and the quiet tinkling of the calmer river and symphonic birdsong. "Are you doing a summer of extreme sports or something?" asked one of the young lads who watched me and ran after me down the river. I explained as effectively as I could while being carried down a river, and they wondered aloud to each other: "Why didn't we come here to do this?!"
Why indeed? Exhilarated, refreshed, we wandered back past wildflower meadows and fields of cows, in the golden Dartmoor sunshine, to get some much needed lunch.
