The strange obsession with having the right ‘kit’

Have you got what it takes to go ‘wild swimming’? No, not so much the hardiness or the love of sinking your feet into the boggy bottom of a lake or feeling something brush against your ankle that could be a fish, a plant or something more sinister. Have you got the right kit?

Outdoor swimming – or open-water swimming, wild swimming, ‘in-my-day-we-just-called-it-swimming’, whatever you want to call it – is enjoying a swell in popularity, and alongside what is supposed to be a simple pursuit is a growing obsession with having the latest equipment.