Swimming the seasons

Follow poet and nature writer Polly Atkin as she swims through the turning year in the rivers, lakes and tarns of the English Lake District, in this lyrical ode to the uplifting power of water. This is a love story between a person and a place. It is a story of acceptance, persistence and finding joy in the everyday, as eight years of outdoor swimming through every season deepen Atkin's knowledge and understanding of both the landscape she calls home and her disabled body.

Each month in the water reveals how a life lived with pain can be as rich, rewarding and full of delight as any other.

Atkin swims for the sheer pleasure of it, showing how that pleasure may be found in every season, even by those who find the cold neither thrilling nor soothing.