Mark Steeple Oral History Summary

Mark Steeple Oral History Summary

Mark Steeple

Summary of an Oral History Recording with interviewee Mark Steeple

Michael Romyn

Kent's Sporting Memories

10 May, 2019

Mark Steeple; Michael Romyn

Kent's Sporting Memories

Mark Steeple Oral History Recording

Microsoft Word Document

English

Typed summary

Mark Steeple

Kent’s Sporting Memories Oral History Summary
Interviewee: Mark Steeple
Interviewer: Michael Romyn
Date: 4 April, 2019
Location: Mark Steeple’s home in Burmarsh, Kent.


0:00 Place and date of birth
0:15 Where Mark grew up; where he went to school; not enjoying watching or playing many sports but always having a fascination with water sports and the sea; a list of the water sports he’s taken part in over the years.
2:55 His father’s interest in swimming; swimming and doing a lifesaving course in Ashford open air swimming pool in the early seventies; the popularity and eventual infilling of Ashford open air swimming pool; the mis-construction of the Stour Centre swimming pool.
7:30 Swimming in Folkestone Lido on the seafront as a child, and all along Kent’s east coast.
9:00 Mark talks about the Hythe Sea Swimmers group; swimming all year round, building up a social group around swimming and drinking coffee on Hythe beach; the ‘squeaky sand’ at Botany Bay.
14:30 Swimming alone, the solitary aspect of swimming; kayaking as a teenager (between the ages of fourteen and seventeen) as part of ‘ESHE’ Canoe Club in Ashford; entering, and winning, various inter-club competitions in Kent, including on the river Stour (slalom), in Canterbury and in Dover Harbor; his childhood fascination with kayaking and canoeing.
18:15 Leaving school and moving to France when Mark was eighteen to work on a campsite, where he continued to kayak and canoe; travelling around France; moving back to England to get a ‘real job.’
20:20 Mark talks about his family; being fascinated by surfing - enjoying its freedom and non-competitive nature; beginning to learn to surf by bodyboarding in Dymchurch once he’d returned from France; remembering his first surfboard, a Bilbo; continuing to learn by himself in Folkestone and on the south coast.
24:20 Discovering the nascent surfing scene in Folkestone in the early-eighties; ‘if you can surf at Folkestone you can surf anywhere’ – describing the surfing conditions in Folkestone and his own abilities on the board; surfing conditions at Camber and in Dymchurch.
27:30 Mark talks about how he got his hands on surfing kit; the existence of one of the UK’s first windsurfing shops in Sandgate; making a homemade wetsuit as a teenager; windsurfing in a heavy wetsuit.
29:40 His first experiences and ‘fascination’ with the windsurfing in the early-1980s, when it was then a relatively new sport; doing a course in windsurfing and moving in with a windsurfing instructor in a flat above the windsurfing shop in Sandgate.
32:20 The windsurfing social ‘scene’ in Folkestone and Sandgate at that time; driving with the surfboard on the roof as an affectation; how windsurfing at that time was relatively male dominated; chauvinism in surfing.
36:00 The windsurfing boom of the eighties; the expense and exclusivity of windsurfing; how kitesurfing eventually supplanted windsurfing; windsurfing still a presence – if much reduced - in Hythe and Camber.
40:20 Mark describes the other watersports he participated in, including fishing, shrimping, snorkeling, water polo, stand up paddle boarding; paddle boarding with his dog; paddle boarding a mile out to sea to swim – ‘it’s another world’; Mark’s will stipulating that he wants to be cremated and his remains scattered in the sea in Hythe.
44:20 Mark’s ‘scrapes’ at sea, including drowning twice when swimming in Cornwall, and breaking his ribs three times while windsurfing; drowning while participating in an ‘aquathon’ race and subsequent concerns for his health; the experience of thinking he would die during a surf ‘wipe out’ in Cornwall; the difference between ‘drowning’ and ‘death by drowning.’
47:12 The experience of trying water polo in Hythe pool; competitive open water swimming and participating in a sprint triathlon; racing in Dover Harbor and in Lydd, where he finished fourth in a busy field.
50:45 Mark’s last, exhausting, windsurfing session in Hythe, and his decision to take up kitesurfing in the early-2010s; the dangers of the sport and its popularity in Camber.
54:40 Losing and staying in touch with his watersports friends; playing badminton with an old canoe friend; learning to scuba dive with his daughter while on holiday.
58:12 The growth in people using the Kent coast for sport over Mark’s lifetime; the development of watersports and cold water swimming; swimming in the sea more than 400 times in 2017, sometimes three times a day; the different conditions each day would present – ‘everyday is an adventure’; getting a ‘high’ from swimming; swimming with, and being stung by, jellyfish; the media sensationalism around jellyfish blooms.
1:07:40 Describing his love of the sea, Mark references a Colin Hay lyric: ‘I like swimming in the sea, I like to go beyond the white breakers where a man can still be free.’; the mystery, freedom and sociability of sea swimming; Mark’s attachment to the coast, not being able to live without it.