COLUMNIST
This month MARTIN DOREY is breaking out his Speedos in anticipation of the 2023 bathing season beginning
The official bathing season is almost upon us! Hurrah! It’s time to reach into the back of the cupboard for that dusty changing robe and give those crusty budgie smugglers a rinse before dashing to the shoreline like a disentangled seal pup released back into the wild.
That’s how the Environment Agency and some water companies see it. That’s why they don’t bother with the expense of testing water quality or monitoring some sewage outfalls in winter. As far as they are concerned, Britain’s bathers are fair weather wimps who shrivel at the first sign of a chill and don’t come out again until late spring.
But we know the truth, don’t we?
We know there are thousands like us who don’t shy away from the sea come the end of September. How could we? The sea is our lifeblood and inspiration. We bathe, surf, SUP and paddle all year round and nothing (other than gastroenteritis) is going to stop us dunking to clear our heads and enjoy nature at its wildest best.
I find it ludicrous that water quality is monitored only in the summer months and that, legally, the bathing season doesn’t last all year. In my opinion, it seems wilfully negligent for the water companies, and the authorities that are supposed to keep an eye on them, to abandon us in the winter. Someone needs to shake them.
Maybe that someone is us? Certainly, with government saying it will trust water companies to self-regulate, it falls to us, again, to hold these organisations to account.
Surfers Against Sewage have long been calling for
