Make Your Future Bigger: Richard Waters on Wild Swimming and Life with Parkinson's

Rich Waters has written travel guides for the most remote corners of the world, freedived with sperm whales, and investigated allegations of genocide in Laos' Forbidden Zone. He's also lived with Parkinson's for 16 years, and this episode is about what happened when he stopped putting the diagnosis in the bin and started writing about it instead.In this conversation, Maria and Vicky sit down with Richard Waters, international award-winning travel writer and Sunday Times bestselling author, to talk about his book Swimming with the Viking of Skye. Part memoir, part adventure, part self-help, it tells the story of how cold water swimming in the lochs and freezing pools of Skye helped him find a way to live well with Parkinson's. Rich talks with remarkable honesty about the early years, the isolation, the difficulty of keeping going with a demanding career, and the unexpected detour into ghost writing that took him somewhere better.He also opens up about something the book tackles head-on: the impulsive behaviours that can be linked to Parkinson's and its medication, and the very personal lessons he's drawn from them. And woven through the whole conversation is a hard-won philosophy: make your future bigger, don't put things off, and know who is batting for you. Oh, and he's awaiting a software update for his deep brain stimulation device. If ever there was a reason to stay hopeful, that is it.🔗 Full show notes: https://shakingitupwithparkinsonspodcast.com/episode-4-wild-swimming/