ice-swimming in sweden: how to really chill out by the pool | travel | the guardian

7/26/2019 Ice-swimming in Sweden: how to really chill out by the pool | Travel | The Guardian

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Ice-swimming in Sweden: how toreally chill out by the poolWinter swimming regular Sally Goble doesnt fear the cold, though a trip to

Skellefte in northern Sweden for the World Cup air temp -3C, water temp

0.3C tests her nerve. Still, she gets to wear a woolly hat

Sally Goble

Tuesday 23 February 2016 06.30

GMT

Most winter tourists to Sweden choose to wrap up warm and takea sled or snowmobile ride or watch the northern lightssomewhere remote but close to a roaring !re. Or spend a night in

the Ice Hotel. Not me. As Im a regular winter swimmer in the UK, theobvious, if daunting, choice was to get into my swimming costume andplunge into icy water, courtesy of the International Winter SwimmingAssociations World Cup, which holds one of its !ve stages inSkellefte, a small town in north Sweden.

Ice-swimming may be a niche sport but it is growing in popularity inthe northern hemisphere: in the UK the Big Chill Swim in Windermere,the only World Cup stage held in the UK, took place on 6-7 Februaryand attracted 1,000 competitors, despite only being in its the thirdyear. The 2016 World Cup event in Skellefte was a more modest a"air,but still attracted more than 300 competitors from 17 countries.

My #ight landed in Lule, a university town and port thats a littlemore urban and glamorous than Skellefte, which is 130km south of it.Facebook selected Lule as the site for a large new hub because of thetechnology know-how of local graduates andbecause it wouldnt haveto spend so much money on air conditioning for its servers. The townhas snow for six months of the year.

Lules Clarion Sense Hotel was my base for the night and before

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venturing out for some evening reconnaissance I checked out itsSkybar restaurant for some surprisingly tender reindeer, and seabuckthorn sorbet. Warm and full, I went out into the night snow to alocal park, in the middle of which was an underground ice cave concerthall. I sat there, bundled up against the cold, on benches carved from

ice, with glistening icy walls and snow #urries falling throughventilation holes, while a folk band played glowing instruments carved out of ice. This was the brainchild of Canadian engineer and iceartist Tim Linhart, who spends eight weeks of the year (with his team)carving the auditorium out of ice, and another two months hostingconcerts.

After a nervous, somewhat sleepless night, I headed to Skellefte

where preparations were under way for the start of the competition.The pool at Skellefte is cut out of the ice that covers the riverSkellefte and is 25 metres long and four lanes wide. It took theorganisers three days to create the hole using chainsaws, and it wasalso someones job to stand and poke the water at the edges to stopmore ice from forming.

In ice-swimming, there are three races: a traditional 25m breaststroke,

50m freestyle and, for the particularly brave, 200m freestyle. Thebreaststroke is swum head up with a woolly hat on. Wearing a hat istheoretically warmer than not wearing one but its more aboutmaking a statement than any practical bene!t.

I signed a disclaimer saying (more or less) that if I had a heart attack itwas my own fault and waited anxiously for my heat. Because I wasonly brave enough to enter the 25m breaststroke I bought a comedyhat in the shape of a shark, which I jammed on over my swimming cap.This gained me instant friends. I chatted to fellow swimmers fromPoland, Latvia, Finland, Sweden and the US, who were waiting aroundfor their heats. I realised, too late, that they might have thought thatthe shark hat was a statement of my swimming prowess; it wasnt.

When the time came for my heat we were marched down to the icepool. When the air temperature is -3C and you are in your swimmingcostume you really dont want to be hanging around so theorganisers swiftness and e%ciency was appreciated. We loweredourselves via steps at the end of each lane and once all competitors


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shoulders were below the waters surface we were given our startingorders.

Before I could think about what I was doing I was swimming 25m withcrowds cheering on. The water was 0.3C and beautifully needle cold

and shocking. The race was over before I knew it. I felt exhilarated andrelieved. Pink as a lobster I staggered up to the sauna brought in for theevent where a Finnish woman gave me a sip of her #ask of sweet, andvery alcoholic, recovery drink. I sat and chattered excitedly with theother women from my heat.

Many of the towns residents turned out to watch the event, lining thebanks of the river, cheering swimmers on with the eerie and dull thud

of thickly gloved hands clapping. After all the heats were over, theevening was spent at a post-competition party, eating and drinking,swapping stories and listening to a hilarious Finnish punk banddressed solemnly as Pierrots and playing traditional folk instruments.

I spent the following day warmly clothed and behaving like aconventional tourist: admiring Skelleftes 17th-century clapperboardhouses nestled, picture-perfect, between tall pine trees and all toppedwith snow.

Lunch was at Vrdshuset Nordangrden in the old part of town whereI grazed on several types of delicately cured sweet salmon andreindeer cold meats, followed by a rich moose stew, all for around 8.This part of Skellefte is beautiful and, blanketed with thick whitesnow, very quiet. My guide Anna-Karin told me how it was alsobeautiful during the summer but I was captivated by the clean, white,glistening silence.

Five more winter swimming eventsPerito Moreno glacier, Argentina

The trip was provided by Swedish Lapland tourism Swedish LaplandTourism and Destination Skelleftea. Sally flew SAS (flysas.com) to Lulevia Stockholm (return flights from 240pp) and stayed at the ClarionHotel Sense (doubles from 120, clarionsense.se) and the Skellefte CityHotel (doubles from 85, skellefteastadshotell.se). The ice swim wasorganised by the International Winter Swimming Association(darkandcold.com; iwsa.world/worldcup)


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TopicsSwimming holidays Sweden holidays Winter sports holidays

Europe holidays Swimming

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For winter swimming in August head to the southern hemisphere.Argentinas winter swimming festival takes place in Patagonia withraces below the Perito Moreno Glacier.

On Facebook

Jinan, ChinaJinan, known as the city of springs, holds a winter swimming festivalon Daming Lake each January, where you can expect watertemperatures to be around 5C.

Big Chill, UK

The best known winter swimming event in the UK, the Big Chill is atwo-day gala held on Windermere in the Lake District. This year over1,000 people took the plunge.

chillswim.com

Tyumen, RussiaThe 10th winter swimming world championships take place on 8-12March in Tyumen, capital of Siberia. It will be the !rst time thecomptition has taken place in Russia and will see 1,500 athletescompete in the icy water.

winterswimming.ru

Lake Bled, Slovenia

In February, Slovenias tranquil Lake Bled hosts a winter swimmingcompetition, with races taking place in water of 3 to 4C.

bled.si


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