Slow Medway

Slow Medway is a writing project, funded by the Arts Council, exploring the River Medway in Sussex and Kent.

I’m travelling very slowly down the River Medway from a tiny tributary that rises close to my house to the sea. On the way I’m looking at themes of place, memory and belonging, talking to people who live and work beside the river or on it, or who simply love to be there. Why are we here? What brings us to the river? Do we feel we belong here?

Thanks to an Arts Council grant, I'm taking a year to find these stories as I wander the river banks or paddle mid-stream in my canoe. Sometimes I'll be swimming - I'm the one with her head out, glasses on, smiling because I love to be in the river and absorbing everything around me.

If you have a story about your life on the river, why it matters to you, what it makes you feel, I'd love to hear from you. You can email me at sarah@looseleafproductions.co.uk - please do!

I've long swum in the river - dropping into the water and leaving the rest of the world behind is very special to me. But I didn't swim in it as a child - my Dad was the River Engineer and warned me that the river was a dangerous place where people died. My childhood was full of flood stories and midnight phonecalls from lock and sluice keepers. I didn't go on, or in the river, until I was 22.

And even then, I tried to stay dry - I had an ancient kayak and lived on the banks of the Medway at Nettlestead, and would paddle up to Yalding after work and let the current drift me back. I had to overcome my fear many years later before I stepped off the bank and took that first swim.

Why do I want to write about the Medway? Because it's always been in my life but I'm not sure if I belong, or if it belongs in any way to me. Because my Dad can no longer remember his life on the river and it feels important for me to find those memories if I can. And because so few written Medway stories seem to be about the people who live by the river, who work on it, whose lives are changed by it. I know there are many stories to tell and am incredibly excited about hearing them and creating a book that brings them together.