In the Heart of London Finance, Canary Wharf Becomes a Swim Spot

(Bloomberg) -- On a warm up th even in john griffith chaney’s canary bird Wharf, crowds of bankers are smoking and drinking white wine and pints of lager outside the bars lining the waterfront as a flotilla of swimmers in brightly colored caps bobs around the harbor below.

In the shade of skyscrapers, the water appears almost black and can drop to 12C (54F) even in summer. Beneath the surface, swimmers get a sense of vertigo. It’s possible to see the foundations of the nearby buildings, as well as reed beds and sunken concrete many feet below the surface. Mallard ducks, coots and geese nest on floating islands and the water is home to endangered European eels.

“The water is cleaner than most other places, and it’s easy to get to. It’s super,” says Ope Otaniyi, 32, a swimmer who works in finance. He swims at Canary Wharf twice a week to train for a triathlon, usually doing three loops of the course, equivalent to about 900 meters. There is another benefit to swimming here, he says. The surrounding towers are a bonus for “sighting” — terminology for directing oneself in open water, where it’s easy to get disorientated.

Max Sharp, a 26-year-old who works in real estate investment and swims in the dock every few weeks, started coming to train for a triathlon but kept returning after the race was done. He says the audience of dockside drinkers adds an informal pressure that encourages him to swim harder. “You feel like you have to improve and not look tired,” he says. Sometimes his girlfriend, who works nearby, is one of the spectators — she comes to watch him and they go for a drink together afterwards.

Open-water swimming is more associated with reservoirs, rivers and the sea. But in the heart of British capitalism, overlooked by the towering offices of JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley, Canary Wharf’s Eden Dock is seeing a rise in demand alongside a growing interest in outdoor swimming. So far this year, there have been more than 1,200 booked swimming sessions, compared with 440 last year, according to the Canary Wharf Group, which hosts the facility. Day-to-day, it’s run by Love Open Water, a company that operates four open-water sites across the UK.

“It’s not the sort of place where you would consider open-water swimming to be possible,” says Chess Roffe Ridgard, events coordinator at Canary Wharf Group and a swim coach at the dock. “All that wildlife and all that green and all those fish and then [you] look up and you’re surrounded by something that’s so manmade, you just can’t replicate it. It’s an otherworldly experience.”

The wafting cigarette smoke from dockside drinkers, rumble of the nearby Docklands Light Railway and rattle of moped delivery drivers on the nearby road is easy to tune out, replaced by the soft chatter of spectators, splashing of passing swimmers and the earthy scent of freshwater.

“I’ve swum at other open-water venues. Here you have the noise of people, the height of the buildings,” says Dom Ceraldi, 53, an HR consultant. He normally swims in the Royal Docks, but there’s an algae bloom there this week. This is his second time coming to Canary Wharf, and he’s impressed. “This feels almost like a pool.”

Kristina Munkova, 23, a student who lives in nearby Bow, says she is more used to swimming in pools, rivers and the sea, but here the audience adds something different. “I think it’s fun that people are coming down to go for a drink after work and watch the water.”

London’s diverse swim spots — from the Serpentine lake in Hyde Park to the ponds of Hampstead Heath and the docklands in the east — have made it a destination for swim tourists, says Roffe Ridgard, who also works as a guide for swim tourism company SwimTrek. And the city isn’t alone in offering novel dips.

In Paris, spots along the Seine are now open for swimming in July and August. In Denmark, “harbor baths” let city-dwellers swim on the waterfronts of Copenhagen and Odense, and in Zurich lake swimming is free. In Bern and Basel, in Switzerland, some workers commute by floating down the river, and in New York City a floating pool is planned in the Hudson. Some 150 organizations across 83 cities and towns globally have now signed up to Swimmable Cities, a group founded on the eve of the 2024 Paris Olympics to make swimming accessible to all.

Outdoor swimming is about more than just fitness. A survey published in 2022 by the Outdoor Swimming Society, a UK-based advocacy group, found that 94% of members swim outdoors because it brings them joy. Roffe Ridgard says she’s witnessed a change in the demographic of central London’s open-water swimmers, which used to be dominated by men aged 35 to 45 but is now more weighted toward older, female swimmers. It’s gone from “a pursuit of those doing triathlons” to something that’s seen to help with menopause, weight loss, mental health and even pain relief, she says, while a warming climate also means people are increasingly seeking ways to cool off in the summer.

In the UK, outdoor swimming has also become a matter of public debate. Britain’s rivers are largely unsuitable for it because sewage and agricultural waste contaminate them with harmful bacteria; the Thames, which flows through London, is no exception. The water in Canary Wharf’s dock is completely cut off from the river and fed by an aquifer, filtered through the silty, sandy soil that sits below ground level in this part of London. It’s tested monthly for harmful bacteria and has always been clean, Canary Wharf Group says.

The water is deep (up to 20 feet in places) and cold, so swimmers need to be confident. Love Open Water mandates that everyone wears bright swimming caps and inflatable tow floats. Two lifeguards in kayaks are on hand, and swimmers check in and out of the water with an electronic wristband. There’s space for 25 swimmers every half hour, each paying £9.50 for a timed entry slot during Wednesday and Thursday afternoons and Friday and Saturday mornings. The dock is currently only operating in the summer months but might stay open this winter, depending on levels of demand, the Canary Wharf Group says.

This swimming site is part of what was once West India Docks, opened in 1802 for the loading and unloading of ships to ease congestion at London Bridge a few miles upstream. It was a maritime trading hub until the advent of bigger ships and shipping containers in the 1970s and ’80s, after which it fell into disuse. In the ’90s, the Canary Wharf area was given a second life as the hub for Britain’s finance, legal and professional-services industries.

One rationale for the open-water swimming was to get people into the office, says Roffe Ridgard, as working from home rose in popularity after the Covid-19 pandemic. It seems to be doing the trick: The Friday morning swim slot is particularly popular among office workers. Thursday evenings are also often sold out, as people increasingly replace their post-work pints (or at least pre-empt them) with healthier activities, she says. Other recent openings in the district include restaurants and bars but also florists, nail salons, padel courts and the UK’s largest sauna. “It’s not people getting the pints in any more,” she says. “It’s definitely a change in culture.”

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