Join Anna Deacon and Vicky Allan as they discuss their new book, The Ripple Effect! They’ll be diving into the stories of swimmers who have found and formed new communities since wild swimming has grown in popularity.
Vicky and Anna have been swimming together since 2018 when a mutual friend introduced them, saying, “You two both like wild swimming, maybe you should even write a book together”. Within a year they had travelled the country, going on swim safaris, plunging into waterfalls and dipping in bays with some of the remarkable swimmers featured in Taking the Plunge. And they didn’t stop swimming and writing there. They drew together the hive mind knowledge of the swim world in their The Art of Wild Swimming guides to Scotland, England & Wales and Ireland. All the way through they have been dipping away with their own local groups, big and small, and marvelling at the joy and support swimming with others can bring. But it was a dip with a community in Ireland called the Ripple Effect that inspired this book and its title. From then on they started to see ripples of infectious love everywhere. They wanted to spread the news, to turn those ripples into words and images and put them out onto the ocean as a book.
Vicky Allan is a journalist who writes chiefly about the environment (and especially watery issues) for the Glasgow Herald. She is also the author of a book about the menopause, co-authored with television star Kaye Adams, titled Still Hot! and a creepy cat novel, Stray.
Anna Deacon is a photographer and writer who has also written a popular travel guide book titled Wild Guide Balearic Islands with her sister Lizzie, and published articles for The Guardian, Scotsman and many more. She also hosts the popular Instagram page @wildswimmingstories from which these books began.