When Becca Harvey agreed to lead a beach dook at Montrose next weekend, she had no idea that the town’s water was already in her blood.
So when she discovered an ancestral connection to the seaside town going back four generations, she admits “it blew my mind”.
Becca, 32, is an ice swimmer and the star of The Ice Mile, a documentary film following her journey to complete an ice mile (a mile-long swim in water below 5C) in Loch Insh, near the Cairngorms.
The film will be screened as part of the Montrose Playhouse’s inaugural LandXSea (‘land by sea’) Film Festival next Saturday, and in celebration, Becca will be encouraging intrepid wild swimmers to join her for a dip at Montrose Beach.
But it was only when she spoke to her father about the festival that Becca discovered she had another connection to the beach – much closer to home.
“That beach dook in Montrose is going to be so special, because I’ve not been in the water there,” explains Sunderland-based Becca.
“And I’ve just discovered that my great-grandfather was born in Montrose! And his dad was a fisherman there.”
Montrose water ‘in my blood’
Becca’s great-grandfather, Arthur Beedie, was born in Montrose in 1895. A metal worker, he built ships in Montrose before leaving for Surrey later in life.
But even more ingrained in the fabric of the town was Arthur’s father James Beedie, a salmon fisherman and foreman who worked for Joseph Johnson and Sons for 54 years.
After working with her dad to dig out her ancestors’ old addresses from censuses, Becca says she’s going to use her visit to Montrose to take a tour of her own family history.
“They lived on the Seagate for a little bit, along the harbour,” explains Becca. “James fished in Usan as well, he moved all over.
“It’s amazing to think that years later, I’ll be swimming in a place where my ancestors used to fish,” she smiles.
“The water is in my blood! Maybe that was all part of it, being called back.”
Water was ‘only place I didn’t feel pain’
Becca’s current dip into her family history all started five years ago, when she plunged into ice cold water.
Back in 2018, with a fresh diagnosis of PTSD and suffering from phantom pains as well as the mental health difficulties the condition presented, Becca was desperate for relief.
“I just was looking for sort of alternative medicine really,” she recalls. “I found a community of ice swimmers down in Clevedon, near Bristol, and I just got completely addicted to it.
“The water was the only place I didn’t feel pain. As soon as I submerged, all I could think about was how cold it was – you can’t really think of anything else. So it turned into sort of extreme mindfulness!”
‘It’s the mental battle that’s harder’
Becca spent the next three years undergoing gruelling daily training in icy waters to achieve her ice mile.
Initially, she set out to prove that she “wasn’t broken” by achieving the feat; but she admits that it was through the training, not the final recorded swim, that she found the most satisfaction.
“I think that’s one of those things that you want to think,” she reflects. “That these kinds of challenges will suddenly make everything better, and it’ll be like a ‘click’ moment. But for me, I don’t think it did that.
“It’s the mental battle that’s harder, and training every day.
“So by the time you get to that ice mile, it’s not actually that moment that is pinpointed in giving you all the euphoria – it’s all the training beforehand that’s proving to yourself that you can keep doing something.”
It was this journey – as well as the final hurdle – that director Rachel Sarah captured in the film.
Love kept Becca warm in freezing loch
Somewhat surprisingly, Becca reveals that her ice mile – despite being the culmination of the film and all of her training – was “one of the calmest swims I’d every done” because for once she did not have to be concerned with her personal safety in the treacherous cold water.
“Usually, when you get into cold water swimming or ice swimming, you’re thinking about how cold you’re getting,” she explains. “You’re constantly fighting demons.
“But for the ice mile attempt, I had a trauma medic on a paddleboard, a safety rib, and two spotters on the side. And you effectively hand your safety over to these other people, which you never usually do.”
So without the risks of deadly cold shock and hypothermia to worry about during that momentous swim, what did occupy Becca’s mind?
“There’s these studies about emotion and how it’s linked to body temperature,” she smiles. “And when we think of things that fill us with love or happiness, they’re supposed to help you with your body temperature.
“So I was just thinking of all these lovely memories that would keep me warm, and thinking about how beautiful the water was. It was a gorgeous sunny day, and I could see the light trails through the water as I was swimming.”
Fighting climate change from San Francisco to Montrose
Becca’s spine-tingling journey is just one of the stories which will be screened at LandXSea, which is Scotland’s only climate-focused film festival.
Festival director Rachel Caplan grew up in Edinburgh but previously ran the famous Green Film Festival in San Francisco.
She explains that in its inaugural year, LandXSea is aiming to raise awareness of the effects of climate change across the world and get people involved with environmental organisations on a local level.
Along with Montrose-based filmmaker Anthony Baxter (You’ve Been Trumped, Flint), she has put together a programme which she hopes inspires the same kind of social changes that she saw in the US.
“We can perhaps hear about things on the news and just feel a bit overwhelmed, but when we share in someone’s story of triumphs and challenges for a couple hours, it can really change the way we view a certain issue,” explains Rachel.
“People in San Francisco would come up to me on the street all the time and tell me about how they’d seen a film at the Green Festival and it had changed their life.
“It might be that they’d changed their career path, or gone back to study for a different degree or got involved with a community group.
“There are a million places to hook on, you just have to find the one thing that you’re passionate about, and it ripples out.”
‘Terrible devastation’ of Montrose Beach
For Playhouse patron Anthony, that point of passion is Montrose itself, making it the perfect home for a festival which is fighting for climate action.
“Montrose is obviously a coastal town with a great history of sea links,” he explains.
“But we’ve seen terrible devastation of our beach here over recent years. I remember coming here first at seven years old on holiday, and there was this huge expanse of sand.
“And some blame climate change, and some say the erosion is man-made, with the dredging for the ports. But whichever way you look at it, we’ve got on our doorstep here a sense of a disappearing asset of the town.”
‘I watch seals and porpoises in my spare time’
Driven by her strong affinity for the water – and the fact it was “almost impossible” to find a body of water cold enough to do an ice mile south of Scotland due to rising temperatures – Becca agrees that it’s vital for people to “give back” to the land and sea around them.
She welcomes the LandXSea Festival’s mission, saying: “Film has a huge part to play in the fight against climate change.
“It makes it accessible – you don’t need any qualifications to enjoy a film. You just have to be a person and be passionate about what you do.”
Leading by example, she volunteers as a mammal medic for the British Divers Marine Life Rescue.
“If there’s seals or porpoises, cetaceans that are stranded or just in need of a bit of watching, I go and do that in my spare time,” she explains.
“I’m always very passionate about reminding people that we as swimmers talk about how much we get from the water, but we don’t often give a lot back.”
Fortunately, Becca observes, the explosive uptick in people taking up wild swimming since Covid has given ordinary folk a personal incentive to care more about the quality of their bodies of water.
“The Outdoor Swimming Society did a study, and post-Covid, the outdoor swimming community had exploded by 300% back in 2021,” she explains.
“It’s making people more aware of the environment impact that we have on water, regardless of whether it’s coastal or inland, and I think that’s really important.
“Everyone keeps talking about sewage and overflow from water companies, and you think well actually, this has been going on for years and years – it’s just now there’s more people to care about it.
“It’s almost like we’ve got an army of custodians for the water now, and for the North Sea, we absolutely need that.”
The LandXSea Film Festival takes place at Montrose Playhouse from September 15-17 2023. For more information and tickets, please see the festival’s website.
