Highlight - Bangor Uni Wild Swimming (w/ Geo Maynard)

This week, I chatted with Geo Maynard, Captain of Bangor Uni's Wild Swimming Club, a brilliant club that provides trips out to Wales' most stunning natural areas. In our chat, we talk about the social and health benefits of wild swimming, and her journey into club management. Be sure to follow them on Instagram, via @bangorwildswimmingclub

 

Alex Pelling (Host), joined by Geo Maynard, Captain - Bangor Uni Wild Swimming Club

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Alex: So Geo, tell me tell me about you!

Geo: Yeah, yeah. So I am the captain of the world swimming club at Bangor University. I'm going into my fourth year and in my first year at uni we — we — it's such a beautiful place up there and I have like grown up by the sea. I'm from North Devon originally, such a perfect sea area.

And going up there I was like, I want to take advantage of all of the amazing scenery. I want to go wild swimming and just met loads of people who also were super interested in it.

So in my first year, I thought I wonder if there's a club at the uni that does it. There wasn't one. So I thought why — I'm gonna start one. Started it. And then some other people took it over from me and then last year I took it over again. And here we are today.

Alex: So you've been wild swimming before uni, yes. How did you get into that originally?

Geo: So, when I'm not in Bangor University, I live in North Devon down in the south, and have been swimming in the beaches here, surfing and all of the underwater stuff in the sea that you can think of, we sort of dabble in it around here.

So yeah, mainly surfing a bit when I was younger and then as I got older just going and swimming in the sea. And then deciding I can't really be bothered to drive all the way to the beach — can I go and swim in the river? Yes, I can — to go swimming in the rivers.

And we don't really have any sort of lakes around here. There's a couple of reservoirs where you can do water sports. So a lot of people go paddle boarding out there. So I think I've done that.

But yeah, just growing up around it. So you just naturally kind of get into it, I think.

Alex: Amazing, that's really cool. 

So interesting — for context, I knew some people from the Bangor Uni Octopush Club.

Geo: Yeah, the underwater hockey club.

Alex: Yeah, they're super nice people. Yeah, so — obviously I have a place in my heart for the uni, haha.

So just to give you a bit of a picture, let's say I'm a student at the uni who wants to come along to a swim, what would that look like?

Geo: Yeah, so it's really chilled out because we're not like a competitive club. We don't do any training as such.

We do like weekly trips out to wherever, we try and vary it whether we go to the beach or we go to a lake or, you know, sometimes we do a walk — you can walk up Snowdon and there's like a river that goes down that you can swim up there.

And we all jump in the cars, or in the van if we're organized enough to ask the uni for a van — not very often that happens — we all just jump in the cars, wherever we're going, and then it's super deep chilled out.

Like, some people are straight in, some people are like "yeah, run, dive, go" and are straight in, other people — especially the time of year that we tend to go, from sort of September onwards — it's cold. So some of us are sort of there, stood, very slowly moving our way in, but it's super chilled out.

You know, some people just come for the vibes. Some people don't even get in the water. Some people just come to hang out. We just want everyone to come and have fun, so it's really really chill. We just try and make it so that everyone has a good time, really. Yeah.

Alex: It can seem quite kind of technical, but it has all these health, social benefits. Yeah, I'm always interested about how people communicate their activities and how they talk about it. So when you meet someone, how do you talk about it? Like what has captivated you about it, basically?

Geo: So, a little bit of background about me — before I came, so I'm a mature student. I'm 31. So I went back — I went to uni when I was 20 — I mean 28, I think 28, 29 when I went back to university. Before that I worked in the NHS and I worked in mental health services.

And what I find fascinating, amazing about it is how important it is for your mental health and how much it can really help. I mean, that's what I find so interesting about it.

And that's what I like to highlight to people about the benefits of it, is that especially in a group setting, it's so good for just mental health in general — like cold water therapy and things like that have been proven to be good for your physical and mental health.

But what — connecting with people who are interested in a similar thing and making new friends and having that little sense of community, it's really important, and that's what we try to highlight to people, and what we try to put out to people, is that — not necessarily our club, but just the sport in general — is that it's such a community that we have.

And there's little pockets and little communities all over the place. There's like different groups that you can join, like the Blue Tits and things like that, and they're wild swimming groups that are all around the UK.

And it's amazing the connection that it brings with people, and the way that that benefits people's mental health and physical health is just fantastic. That's my little — what captivates me about it.

Alex: Fantastic. Well, it's really great, great summary.

Um, yeah, I kind of said a similar thing actually, um, the next one was actually the answer about community, and last week we interviewed Megan from Club HQ, and she talked about her platform for club management — very different kind of thing. But she said the same thing, like you said about involving people and making sure everything's connected.

So I wanted to ask, as sort of a bridge to that, you said about community and how you feel you develop that, because you've been managing your club for a few years now, right?

Geo: Yeah.

Alex: Yeah.

Geo: Yeah, so with the club it's like it's quite easy to manage it. So we just use social media and like WhatsApp and texting platform things like that. And also because everyone has a university email we can securely email everyone as well.

Um, so that's a really easy way to sort of build that community within the club, and then we just encourage — um, and I would always encourage people to look on things like Facebook and things like that.

Um, and social media platforms are the way forwards, you know, in this day and age — they are the way forwards with connecting, and you can find all of those different groups and communities on there.

And so we have a social media page, and we communicate mainly via that. Um, and we communicate with our members, but also we connect with and we follow other sort of wild swimming societies and clubs and communities as well. So yeah, mostly social media we use for our communication and connection.

Alex: Cool. I always kind of see pockets of people kind of saying about this, how being in the cold water, I don't know to describe this, you probably could, in terms of — um, in your mind is kind of, yeah, not like it cleanses — the wrong word, but kind of like, releasing the endorphins and that experience. Is that kind of on the right track?

Geo: Yeah, I think there's loads of different ways that people describe it, like "oh yes, endorphins," "it's this," "it's that."

For me, I literally physically cannot think about anything else other than "oh my lord, this is cold water, I'm really cold, I need to start moving, I need to get out, I need to do it." Like, it's all I'm thinking about, so everything else that's in my mind, it's gone, because all I can think of is it's cold. It's cold. But then once you're in, and you're not cold anymore, you sort of get used to it, then you're going, "oh, this is lovely."

Geo: For all that, you know, 10, 20, 30 minutes, however long you're in the water — you are just so focused on where you are that everything else just disappears, which is quite nice.

Actually, it's quite nice to have that moment of just nothing else — all of my other world problems, they're in the past.

Alex: Like, "I don't need to think about anything else right now". I like the idea of being able to like get out of your head for a second.

Geo: Yeah. Yeah, it's really nice, a lot of people really benefit from it, I think.

Alex: And I do feel like it's a dream thing for students as well, being in a new city and being able to take advantage of the beautiful countryside. I feel that it's so easy to feel kind of isolated, and not end up taking advantage of the area and city you're in. I feel this is a great way to do it.

So as a last question, you've been running the club for a while now - what are your aspirations, you carry on? What's the forward position for that?

Geo: Yeah, so I've got one more year. This will be my last year at university, so it'll be my last year as captain.

I would just absolutely love for it to carry on, for it to continue being successful and to get more and more successful.

We've had more interest this last year than potentially we did the year before, but we've had so much interest and so many new people have joined, so we're fingers crossed gonna have that again this year.

And yeah, I would just love for it to keep going, and I would love for the newer, the younger members who are in here to continue wanting it to carry on as well and potentially take over as committee members, and I'd just love to see it go from strength to strength, because I do think it's got such a benefit.

It's brought so many different people from different courses as well who, if we didn't have that, might potentially never have crossed paths. It's brought all of them together. Everyone's made some really solid friendships through it.

It's benefitted everyone's mental health, but we've got members who have got chronic health conditions and hypermobility, things like that, who have really benefited from it as well.

And I would love — yeah, I would just love to see it just keep getting bigger.

Alex: Keep getting better and keep going. I'm sure it will, because it's got this universal appeal, which is good. Definitely.

Geo: Yeah. Definitely!

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