As heat in London neared records, a friend took Kurtis Brown east to a hidden stretch of river. Mr. Brown lounged in the shade as teenagers played catch in the water and old-timers paddled around.
Swimming here, in the River Lea, is banned, as it is in most of the city’s open waterways. But Mr. Brown’s apartment was roasting, and he did not want to fight for a coveted slot at an outdoor pool.
“I would normally probably be at home if I didn’t know about this spot,” he said, adding that everywhere else would be “packed.”
London is in the sweaty grip of another heat wave this week, and people in the city are scrambling again for an escape. But finding a swimming hole in London can be a trial of its own.
Indoor pools fill up with paddling children and splashing adults. The limited outdoor options are booked as soon as the forecast changes, with security guards deployed to help manage the crowds.
The demand is pushing some to make furtive visits to the city’s rivers, canals and ponds, many of which are affected by pollution and sewage runoff or are reserved for wildlife.
At the River Lea, hot days are a siren call for locals who see it as a sacred communal gathering spot — even though local officials have warned that the river, which is close to the sewage system, is polluted. In North London, swimmers have drawn local anger by dipping in ponds meant for the wild birds of Hampstead Heath, prompting security patrols of the area.
Lines and Bureaucracy
Swimming by the book in London means navigating a system of online calendars and entry fees, which has grown more intense in a post-pandemic embrace of outdoor swimming.
Officials have been urged to widen access to areas like London’s reservoirs, ponds and outdoor pools called lidos, which proliferated in the 1930s before falling out of favor. According to an accounting by London Museum, the number of outdoor swimming spots in the capital has declined by about three-quarters since 1950.
Others, however, have pointed to a renaissance. In the regenerated docks of Canary Wharf, an outdoor pool called Sea Lanes opened just as a recent heat wave took hold. Even at 9 a.m., the pool was buzzing. Swimmers plunged into chilly green water, surrounded by the gleaming towers of international finance firms. About 7,000 people had passed through in its first week, the operator said, leaving the pool fully booked.
Harry Smith, the director of Sea Lanes, said the company wanted to introduce a safe way for people to have access to open water. Still, he said, they had been surprised by the demand.
“In Europe, we don’t have AC, so it’s a survival thing,” said Jonah Attalla, 27, a freelancer who visited the pool one Friday morning and said the heat had rendered his home a “greenhouse.”
“We’re a victim of our popularity,” said Rafal Cymbalista, the general manager at London Fields Lido, which had about 455,000 visits last year. He expected even more this year. Mr. Cymbalista added that the lido kept walk-in space open to serve locals, even if it was fully booked.
“The booking system helps us a lot,” he said, adding that lines used to be even longer. Staff members patrol the pool to check that visitors do not exceed their allotted time.
For more than a century, Londoners flocked without restriction to the designated swimming ponds at Hampstead Heath, a vast wooded tract north of the city center. But a post-Covid policy requiring paid bookings has been imposed in high summer, in which swimmers can reserve a slot in advance or hope for walk-in availability. Operators of the system, a charity, say it helps keep swimmers safe and the funds are reinvested into maintaining the facilities.
Now, in summer, online bookings disappear as soon as they are released, said Elise Tamm, who was waiting in line one Saturday at the ponds. “I love to swim in a cold seawater,” she said. “But, I mean, you’ve got to take what you have.”
A Furor at the Ponds
People have ventured into other ponds reserved for wildlife during hot days. Last month, videos of swimmers splashing near swan eggs and newly hatched cygnets spread on social media, angering conservationists.
“I’ve watched it get worse and worse and worse,” said Nicola Greene, who documents birds in Hampstead Heath on social media, referring to visitors disregarding the no-swimming signs. Witnessing the disturbance of a conservation area was “heartbreaking,” she said. “We had two Egyptian geese that had been there for two years, every night. They’ve left now.”
The behavior was “appalling,” Alderman Gregory Jones, the chairman of the group managing the area around the ponds, said in a statement. The group responded by increasing patrols at the heath, he said.
Reid Allen, an academic at City St. George’s, University of London, who researches unauthorized swimming in London, drew a link between the system of payments and bookings with the behavior at restricted ponds.
“People are frustrated, and they’re hot — and they don’t have access,” he said. “So they’re going into alternative spaces.”
While London has options for outdoor swimming, it has lagged behind other European cities in making them accessible, Mr. Allen said. Even though many pools offer concessionary rates, some locations are expensive. Those who find it hardest to find a swimming place tend to be from lower-income or minority ethnic groups, he said, who already have the fewest options to escape the heat.
Perhaps that was why, even with warnings about pollution and safety, people are almost always lounging on hot days in the shallows of the River Lea, known affectionately to locals as their neighborhood beach. Without slots and booking apps, it was easy to stay there for hours, listening to music with feet in the water, however questionable.
“I don’t need to look anywhere else,” one of the loungers said. “I’ve got this place.”
