'I wish I'd known the dangers of wild swimming' - two mothers whose sons drowned in freak accidents tell their story

When Debbie Turnbull dropped her 15-year-old son Christopher at the station one hot day in the summer holidays to go swimming with his friends at a nearby beauty spot, she never dreamt that he might not come home again. On that morning a little over 11 years ago, Christopher bounded out of the car and ran to his friends, turning only to wave and shout: “Love you mum!”, before taking the train inland from Llandudno to Capel Curig in Snowdonia, where he planned to spend the afternoon messing about in a lagoon he and his friends had discovered nestled in the hills.

“All summer they’d been going up to Capel because the weather was so good,’ Debbie tells me, recalling in minute detail that day, which will be forever etched in her memory. ‘I didn’t know exactly where they were going but he’d come home telling me how brilliant it was.

“He was full of excitement that day. In the days before there had been a yellow flood warning, but it was still hot so they wanted to go to the spot they had found.

“He got out of the car and ran to his mates. They got on the train, and that was it. He was gone. Though I didn’t know that then.”

It wasn’t until hours later that Debbie was given the news every mother dreads. Her boy had drowned in a terrible accident. Not only that, but the authorities - who had been searching for him for hours by the time Debbie and her husband John were contacted - couldn’t find his body.

“It was about 16:30 and I’d heard helicopters whirring all afternoon but thought nothing of it. John walked in from work, looked at me and said: ‘Christopher’s dead. I know he is, I know it’s him.’ I said: ‘What are you talking about?’ He said: ‘Where did he go today?’ I said: ‘Capel, I dropped him off at the station.’

“He told me how on the news on the way home he had heard that a boy had been lost in the water at Capel, but they weren’t releasing his name.

“I was calling the police station when the front doorbell went. They told us what had happened, that there had been an accident, that Chris had fallen into the water and not emerged, that they couldn’t find him.”

It continues to be a huge problem every summer - for the past five years an average of 87 people have drowned in the months of July and August in the UK, and this summer sadly looks to have been no exception. According to the Royal Life Saving Society, at least 100 people have died in drowning accidents this year already, with that number expected to rise (typically, they say, almost a third of these incidents occur in July and August). 

When Debbie spoke to Christopher’s distraught friends who had watched it all happen, she discovered the terrible senselessness of her only son’s death. He had been sitting on a ledge in the water, at a spot where three small waterfalls collide, creating an invisible whirlpool under the surface. “He slipped and as he went in he got sucked under. There is a cave underneath the ledge, and Chris was sucked into it. His trainer got stuck on a tree root.

“When we were taken to identify him in hospital, it was just surreal because he looked so beautiful.

“He still had his necklace which he’d always had around his neck, which I took to mean it must have been quick, because he was still wearing it. I wear it every day now.”

It has been 11 years since Christopher died. He was their only a child - a miracle baby they thought they might never have after Debbie was initially told she would struggle to have children. There have been times, she tells me, when she just wanted to shut the world away - at one point her depression became so overwhelming that she attempted suicide. Her husband John, an ex-army man, has been her rock, as have the family and friends who rallied round them in this tight-knit coastal community.

Debbie has always been adamant that his death should not have been for nothing. Within a matter of weeks, she began going into schools to warn children and teachers alike about the dangers of wild swimming. She has since set up River and Sea Sense, a charity which aims to educate young people about how to be safe around water. “By October, I’ll have spoken to 200,000 schoolchildren,” says Debbie, who has worked tirelessly to try to make sure other parents never have to suffer the same devastation.

The path Debbie and John have trodden has at times been suffocatingly lonely. Debbie counts herself lucky to have had John to lean on, but though people have always been endlessly kind, it is impossible to understand how it feels to lose a child in such traumatic circumstances unless it has happened to you. Months after Christopher’s death, as news of the campaigning she was doing featured on the news, a woman reached out to Debbie on Facebook. She didn’t know her, she said, but she did know exactly how she was feeling.

Maxine Johnson’s son Reuben died two months before Christopher. He drowned after diving into a reservoir near his home in Merthyr Tydfil, where he had been camping with friends to celebrate the end of exams. He jumped in and tried to swim across, not realising that despite the heat of the day, the water was so icy cold his body would go into shock within minutes. He was just 15.

Maxine, 52, and Debbie, 58, have been in contact regularly over the past 11 years, checking in to see how the other is doing, marking anniversaries with a supportive message. They live at opposite ends of Wales, but until today the pair have never met. A decade on from the terrible events which brought them into each other’s consciousness, they have decided to meet properly, though they feel they have known each other for years. “I got a big lump in my throat while I was standing at the station this morning,” says Maxine, as we walk through the drizzle up the sodden path to Capel Curig, the spot where Debbie’s son died. “Reuben died in similar circumstances to Chris,” says Maxine, who stayed at the Pontsticill Reservoir where her son died for three days in the summer of 2006, until they finally found his body. “That summer there seemed to be accidents all over the country. That’s how it felt anyway. And then it happened to you, Debbie, and because you were in Wales too, I know it’s silly but I just felt a connection with you.

“Having someone who understands your thoughts and feelings about such a traumatic event in your life is so important.

“We both feel passionate about water safety. I beat myself up terribly after Reuben died. I knew I couldn’t have done anything, but I just felt I should have known somehow about the dangers.”

You can hear the waterfalls before you see them. The weather has been bad, and Debbie explains that when it’s colder up in the mountain, the water is choppier in the valley. Today, the water is grey and fast-moving, roaring over the rocks, but it isn’t hard to imagine this fairytale spot at its best on a hot day, teenagers jumping in and out of the pools just as Christopher did.

Debbie comes here often, but finds she can’t stay for long. Maxine, who has two grown up daughters and a son, says she is the same. “I go up to the reservoir and then I don’t know why I’ve come,” she says.

“On the first anniversary of Chris’s death, one of his friends rang me up and said: ‘Debbie, will you come and meet us up at Capel at midday?’ John and I arrived to see about 50 of them all lined up around the edge of the water, each holding a white lily. We just stood there for two minutes in silence, and then threw the flowers into the water.”

We don’t have flowers with us today, but the two women stand and look at the water for a moment, before turning to leave. “Oh look at us,” laughs Debbie. “They’ll be sat up there now saying: ‘Listen to them!’ Come on, let’s go and find a cup of tea.” They are off to plot more ways to spread their message, and make their sons proud.

River Sea and Sense is a finalist in this year’s National Lottery Awards. Winners will be featured on “The National Lottery Awards” broadcast on BBC One, September 27. Head to lotterygoodcauses.org.uk/ awards to find out more.

Find out more about Debbie's charity River and Sea Sense here.