Ocean Film Festival Tour Magazine - 2023 Virtual Edition

BLUETITS
MEET THE COLD-WATER SWIMMING GROUP
THAT’S TAKING THE WORLD BY STORM
11 minutes
Filmmaker: Katie Burdon
ight years ago, I would never
“Ehave guessed I would be happy
just bobbing around in the water, talking
bollocks. And now I love nothing better,”
says Sian Richardson, founder of the outdoor
swimming movement Bluetits.
That sentence sums up the ethos of the
group. Bluetits is about fun, friendship
and supporting one another, through the
liberating hobby of open water swimming.
There are no set distances or stop watches,
and thermometers (often in the shape of
rubber ducks) are purely for interest. Bluetits
is free to join, and now has a community of
over 100,000 swimmers worldwide. So how
did it start?
Sian, from Pembrokeshire, says that she
was never sporty at school, but took up
running in her 40s. She worked her way up
UK & IRELAND OCEAN FILM FESTIVAL TOUR
to doing ultra-marathons and triathlons, and
when she started having problems with her
hips, began to train for an ice mile instead
– a challenge that involves swimming a
mile in water that’s 5°C or lower. And that
brought a realisation: “The more I ran, the
more I noticed that runners and triathletes
were generally miserable because their times
were crap or their bike wasn’t quite right,”
says Sian, talking to www.deakinandblue.com.
“When I took up swimming and joined cold
water groups, I realised these people are all
happy! It’s a very different community.”
Sian’s whoops and squeals attracted
attention as she swam in the cold
Pembrokeshire sea throughout the winter of
2014, and others came to join her. And then
more, drawn in by Sian’s enthusiasm and
encouragement. Bluetits now has ‘flocks’
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