There’s nothing quite like floating in the silky waters of the Kenwood Ladies Pond in Hampstead Heath. Tucked away among the trees, it has welcomed swimmers young and old since 1926. At the Pond is a beautiful anthology of seasonal essays celebrating this magical spot. Contributors include Esther Freud, Nell Frizzell, Margaret Drabble, Amy Key and others. We’re pleased to share an extract from Sophie Mackintosh’s contemplative, autumnal essay, ‘A Quietening’, on the blog today. Autumn, Mackintosh finds, is the best season for swimming – the light is warmer, the meadow quieter – so we hope it inspires you to get outside.

There was a time, not so long ago, when I wasn’t addicted to my phone. When I first moved to London I didn’t have a smartphone and I drew maps to job interviews on my forearms and the backs of my hands. I could not tweet ill-advised things from house parties or take artful photographs to post on Instagram. All I could do was text and call; my battery lasted for three days at a time. My phone was not a comfort blanket, but purely functional.

Now I wonder how I lived without it as I navigate my way to the Pond. Though I’ve been there so many times I have a strange blind spot about reaching the Ladies’ Pond, as if it’s a pool from myth or fairytale that switches its location. This effect is enhanced by the swerving of the 4G, the unreliable blip of my Google Maps app, sending me deeper into the heart of the green space when I should be hugging the edges. I’ve accepted now that I just need to let instinct guide where I’m going, to put my phone into my bag and trust that I will get there, even when leaves or trees make the route feel unfamiliar, even when not having my phone in my hand feels like a physical, unbearable discomfort.

*

Summer draws on; the water becomes warmer, and my life becomes different. I swim then, alone or with friends, dipping my body through the silky murk. I am performative about my swimming, so that the lifeguards believe I won’t drown. I am always having to prove things to myself, and want to be graceful, but nothing I do is cohesive or neat – not swimming, not writing. Everything can feel so overwhelming, except for when I am here, uncontactable whether I like it or not. When a dragonfly flies past my head my first instinct is to take a photo, but of course I am submerged.

One of my favourite parts of the Ladies’ Pond in summer is getting out. Lying on your towel, no need to dry yourself, just waiting for the scorching air to make the water a memory. All around you are bodies packed into the available space but never as intrusively as at the Mixed Pond, women having grown up with the awareness of the space we take up, women wanting to give room to women. It is these women I defer to when I fight against the instinct to look at my phone. I am saying to the world: you can wait.

*

Still, sometimes in summer the meadow is full of groups of friends and you are alone, trying to find a patch of grass for your towel, and the air feels too febrile and heavy with gossip and tempers fray in the heat. Sometimes I like to be one body in a sea of bodies, but mostly my heart jumps upon seeing plenty of room in the meadow. This is why autumn is my favourite season for the Pond. It’s a slip of time very easy to miss – the end of summer giving way to crispness, yet still just hot enough to swim and be outside. It’s a space of a couple of weeks, at most. Every visit during this time feels elegiac, and like you’re getting away with something, extending the season secretly and lavishly. Sun on your skin, the water cool but not yet unbearable.

Autumn is the most wholesome time of year in London; the back-to-school feeling, the perfect light, the sense of the year’s close drawing nearer and compelling you to take stock and catch your breath. To walk through the green of the Heath and to the place where all is calm, still, where the meadow is empty except for a few women like you reading a book, making the most of the last sunlight. It is a peace that fills something in me.

*

Autumn this year means a quietening. The frenzied anxiety of the summer gives way to space, finally, something more contemplative. On my last visit to the Pond, I know it is probably my final swim of the year, so I make it count. I stay in the water for as long as possible, and then with all the blood rushing along my limbs I walk to a pub for a pint and a pork pie, a long read of a book, phone mostly tucked away.

The idea that wholesomeness does not have to be a thing snatched in gulps is something that is occurring to me more and more. That the Pond will be there for me next summer, whatever that brings, whatever my life looks like then.

This is an extract from At the Pond: Swimming at the Hampstead Ladies’ Pond, published by Daunt Books. Buy a copy here.

Sophie Mackintosh is the author of The Water Cure; her next novel Blue Ticket is forthcoming in 2020.

To find out more about the Kenwood Ladies Pond, click here.