The Swimmer: running and swimming through London

Lining up for the first plunge of the day at Highgate Men's pond

In The Swimmer, John Cheever's celebrated 1964 short story, Neddy Merrill decides to swim home via a dozen or so of his neighbours’ pools. Of course, to link this chain of water, he has to run across lawns, through woods and down busy roads.

Inspired by Neddy’s watery journey, two south Londoners, Will Watt and Jonathan Cowie, came up with the idea of The Swimmer, a relaxed half-marathon that takes in a number of London’s finest parks and open-air pools. Starting in Hampstead in north London, the route heads down through the centre, crosses the Thames and ends up “back home” at Brockwell lido, near Brixton.

Running across the Heath

After months of admiring it from afar, I finally signed up for the October Swimmer. It’s a brilliant event and I’ve written up the day – or rather early morning – for the Guardian’s running blog: The perfect joy of swimming and running through London.  

Continuing the theme of transplanting great sporting feats to the streets of London,  someone has also invented a London version of the Bob Graham Round. Heights of Madness is a run that takes in all the inner London boroughs - 41 miles, 12 summits in an amazing six hours. Now if they combined this with the Swimmer...

Blue plaque for Edward Whymper

Edward Whymper has become the first mountaineer to be commemorated with an English Heritage blue plaque. One hundred years after his death, the Teddington home of the first man to climb the Matterhorn now boasts one of the unique design icons. The plaque was unveiled by Mick Fowler, president of the Alpine Club - the great organisation of which Whymper was a prominent member. 

It was on July 14 1865, after eight attempts, that Whymper finally made it to the top of the mountain. However, on the descent four members of the party were dragged to their deaths, as reported in the Manchester Guardian on July 21 1865:

This provoked a scandal with claims that the rope had been cut and there was even talk of Queen Victoria suggesting that mountaineering should be outlawed. Whymper was haunted by the deaths and he later wrote in Scrambles Amongst the Alps "I see my comrades of the Matterhorn slipping in their backs, their arms outstretched, one after the other". But not everyone blamed him for the accident as shown by the following article which appeared in the paper a week later:

Read about Whymper's London here.