Words By Sofia Echesortu
Photos by Laura Prieto Martín

Here is something I never planned to become: a person who sets an alarm before the sun is properly up, puts the kettle on, fills a thermos, puts her swimmers on under her trackies, layers a merino on top, then a fleece on top of that, pulls on her socks, steps into her sandals, and walks down to the ocean in the dark to plunge into water that is, by any reasonable measure, too cold. And then tells everyone about it. Relentlessly.

I grew up on Uruguayan summers. Salt water, warm sand, the kind of swimming that makes perfect sense to everyone at a barbecue. Don't get me wrong, my parents are adventurers, we didn't do gentle holidays. There were hikes, camping trips, rivers – all of it. But cold swimming wasn't in my vocabulary. I didn't know it existed as a category.

Then I moved to Sydney and ended up five minutes from Bronte, which I want to acknowledge is an unreasonable privilege and not something I take lightly. Having the ocean at my door every morning is the kind of luck that changes what's possible. And somewhere between that daily walk down and a tarn in Tasmania, something shifted. A tarn, for those who haven't encountered this particular joy, is an alpine lake formed in a glacial cirque. It is also my favourite type of puddle to swim in. To drop into one after a day of hiking, legs aching, water so cold and so clear that you surface feeling genuinely fresh and clear, like you might not even need a shower.

Now my local is Bronte. Every morning, more or less. Some mornings it feels like a decision I made when I was a more optimistic version of myself and I'm honouring it purely out of spite. But then you're in, the first second feels less like water and more like a conversation your body didn't agree to have. And then, somewhere in the next few seconds, something in you just sorts itself out. You come back to yourself in a way that no amount of coffee, therapy, or particularly good nights’ sleep has managed to replicate. You surface and everything goes quiet. Not around you – you're usually surrounded by twenty other people doing exactly the same ridiculous thing – but inside you. Call it meditation if you want. I call it my version of it.

Here's the actual ritual, since apparently 72% of you are already doing this and the rest of you deserve the truth.

The swimmers go on before you leave the house. This is non-negotiable. If you think you'll get down to the water and then change into them, you are lying to yourself and the swim will never happen. Swimmers on first. Trackies, merino, fleece. Thermos. Socks and sandals. I am not embarrassed about the socks and sandals. I've made my peace with it. You should too.

My most important theory: you get to choose your own definition. A swim, a dip, a plunge, a float. Two minutes or twenty. Whatever version you show up with counts. The moment the last of your body heat leaves you is the moment you get out, and that is a completely valid cold swim. You are writing your own rules here. ‘Out’ means wet swimmers off, fleece straight over the top of everything, both hands on something hot. I'll also confess that my lips go purple and my hands go white after every single swim. Every time. And I keep going back. Crazy.

And then, slowly, you develop your version of it. The sunny corner out of the wind, the right drink that warms you up, the friend who always shows up. You stop having to think about it. That's when you know it's stuck.

I've befriended neighbours I'd lived beside for two years without speaking to. I've suggested 6am Bronte as a first date and considered this completely reasonable. I've made friends who'll now drive four hours to get to a freezing river with me and call it a great weekend. I've swum beside an eighty-year-old regular who gets in faster than I do and a first-timer who gasped like she'd been personally betrayed by the ocean, and both of them walked away looking exactly the same: quietly, privately pleased.

I've never regretted a swim. I will sit down with anyone and argue this until the end. Just bring a warm layer. You're going to need it.