This century’s favourite health fad, cold-water swimming, is now available in Canary Wharf’s Eden Dock. Next to the high-rise office blocks and subterranean shopping mall, wetsuit-clad brokers can paddle around in Qatari-owned waters on their lunchbreak. I had to go see the swimmers for myself, and find out if the term “loan shark” was being given a more literal meaning in E14.
Before the pandemic, there were no such aquatic delights in the Wharf. Back then, it didn’t need them. Flooded daily with high-flying bankers and corporate lawyers, London’s answer to Wall Street was thriving. The Jubilee Line extension was built to serve the district in 1999, such was its high footfall. Canary Wharf Group was an attractive prospect when it was acquired by the Qatari sovereign wealth fund and Brookfield, an investment management company with more than a trillion dollars in assets, in 2015 for £2.6bn. Five years later, all seemed to be going swimmingly in the Docklands district. On the last working day in February 2020, 121,638 journeys passed through Canary Wharf station, according to Transport for London figures. The equivalent day in the very next year, however, only 28,013 tapped in and out.
Flexible and fully remote working after the pandemic meant office spaces were no longer in such high demand. Large tenants like the law firm Clifford Chance and the UK’s second-most valuable company, HSBC, announced their departure in favour of smaller digs in the City, and the value of the district’s buildings decreased or stagnated for three years straight. Bankers find the City more vibrant and characterful than the sterile Wharf, where they can spend the whole day underground. Wealth inequality is also an issue: located in the borough of Tower Hamlets, the financial district contrasts unfavourably with the high rates of poverty in some of the surrounding neighbourhoods, such as Poplar. It has also attracted elements of the far right in recent months. The Britannia International Hotel in Canary Wharf, which houses asylum seekers, has been the target of big anti-migrant protests and an alleged arson attempt.
This summer, HSBC decided not to quit the Wharf entirely. But Canary Wharf Group’s office buildings lost £180m in value last year and the future of the area remains uncertain. In order to survive, the financial district is undergoing what I am terming a TGIF-ication. Restaurants, bars, mini-golf and a brand-spanking-new theatre. You name it, they have brought it to the Wharf in the hopes of enticing people back.
Enter Love Open Water Canary Wharf. In the revitalised Eden Dock, which opened last year, punters can book an hour-long session for just shy of a tenner. The swimming season runs from June to the end of October. Many people have talked up the mental health benefits of cold-water swimming in the past few years. And if anyone needs a break, it’s bankers: the Wall Street Journal reported last year that the financial giant JPMorgan capped the working hours of its junior employees at 80 per week. But were the resident bankers, as I suspected, utilising the icy waters to chill themselves during their otherwise demanding work weeks? I asked the regulars.
Robert Hester has almost 100,000 followers on Instagram and was a regular swimmer at Eden Dock when he was training for his first half-ironman triathlon. One of his recent fit-spiration posts has the caption: “Ten habits to become a BEAST”, which is how I knew he was exactly the right man to speak to. The tells, he said, of extreme swimmers in the Wharf are simple. “Someone’s probably wearing an ironman swimming cap, which means they’re probably wearing a £1,000 wetsuit, and that probably means they’re extremely motivated and driven.”
Jacob Ward swapped swimming in his local Cotswolds lakes for dips in Canary Wharf when he moved to London. “Obviously, it’s not as picturesque, but I think, in itself, it is kind of an incredible experience,” he said. “I tend to be there at lunchtime and I do see some people who will rock up in suits, and clearly they’ve come from work.” Jem Collins, a keen outdoor swimmer who lives in London, agreed, pointing out the incongruous surrounding: “It’s really funny. It’s like, literally the dock in the middle – where you come out of the Tube, and there are a lot of people in wetsuits.” She added: “I think, anecdotally, the Venn diagram of bankers and people who do triathlons absolutely crosses over more than you think.”
Love Open Water runs bookable sessions where you can “enjoy views of the iconic One Canada Square and Newfoundland” at lunchtime, after work and at an intolerably early 7am. I decided, in the spirit of the dogged triathletes that allegedly frequent its waters, to attend all three sessions. I arrived for my first session on a Thursday at 1pm and headed to the changing rooms. I was popping on my wetsuit when I struck up a conversation with a woman who worked at (and she whispered this part to me conspiratorially) Barclays. She said it was her second time swimming here, yet she said she was hooked. Another woman said that when the swimming facility opened it was a “game-changer”. “It made my work life so much better,” she added. Hardcore Wharfers can do up to ten laps, she told me (one is 300 metres). “I divide them into the thrashers and the frolickers,” she said of the clientele, explaining that the serious candidates don’t have time to be messing around with doggy paddle.
Wetsuit on, and feeling very much like a frolicker in thrasher’s clothing, I attached my tow float, put on a swimming cap and made my way to the water’s edge. It was an unattractive look, as was the icy-looking expanse below. I tentatively lowered myself down the ladder before plunging into the seemingly bottomless dock. It was a relatively warm day, but I sensed it would be horrible in the colder months. It’s a strange place to go for a swim. Bankers on smoking breaks leered down from their perches high above, observing me as one might a duck. Swimming here might take some getting used to.
Once I had dried off I left my swimsuit out and headed to one of the area’s numerous cafes to pass the time before my second dip. I returned that evening at 7.30pm for “Splash and dash”, a regular event at Eden Dock in which entrants swim 300m before running 3 kilometres – not my idea of a good night out. Richard Heywood-Waddington, who was training for the 20 Bridges Swim in Manhattan, a 28.5-mile loop that passes the Empire State Building, was in attendance. “My partner is a swimming widow,” he joked. Jess Nightingale was also competing. She used to be a lifeguard at the dock so was familiar with the clientele. “It’s an expensive thing to do and everyone here – they’ve got that lifestyle,” she explained. Heywood-Waddington agreed: “Here I’ve noticed there’s always someone wanting to race you.” Nightingale added: “Like Strava in real life.”
We were asked which wave we would like to race in: competitive, intermediate or casual. I opted for casual and was among the final wave to enter the water, around 20 minutes after the keenest athletes. A woman who was swimming with us also worked at Barclays. Did she ever come before work? “God no. I have to be at my desk at 6.30.” On her lunchbreak then? “No, I literally run out, run back in.”
At this point, after-work drinks were in full force on the promenade above us and the same spectators from before crowded around to watch the proceedings, pints in hand. I’m afraid I didn’t give them a very good show. After my swim earlier my legs were starting to feel jellylike and my breaststroke had become more like a drowning woman’s desperate attempt to stay buoyant. I was so slow that by the time I had completed the loop and got my trainers on, some of the runners were already returning. I forced my liquefied legs around the course, finished last and went straight home to bed.
The next morning, I returned to the Wharf. It was 6.45am when I arrived and joined the growing throng of swimmers, eager for their morning dip. As the sun glinted off the windows of JPMorgan and ducklings wove their way through the reeds on the edge of the dock, I started to feel that these people had got it right.
One man who worked in a bank nearby said he tends to come early because at lunch he “usually has to be on the phone to New York”. Another woman who likewise worked in the Wharf swims outside without the extra protection of a wetsuit – even when the temperature drops below 2°C – because “I don’t need this extra stuff in my life”. The water was cool and fresh on my skin as I submerged myself for the final time. Maybe they’d got the swimming part of their lives right, at least.
Canary Wharf’s future role may be as a pleasure ground instead of Britain’s financial Mecca. That’s fine: we should send the bankers packing back to the City, where they belong. And perhaps we could give them less demanding working hours so that they can swim for pleasure, not salvation.
[Further reading: My night out with the citizens of nowhere]
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