Tarnbagging in the Lake District

In the 1950s, Colin Dodgson and Timothy Tyson swam in every tarn (463 according to them) in the Lake District. I tell their story in the April edition of Outdoor Swimmer. Apart from a couple of news reports in 1959, little has been written about these two outdoor swimming pioneers so it was good to bring their amazing feat to a wider audience.

However, 'collecting the tarns' came after many years of bagging mountains. By 1951 they had climbed all the Munros (Scottish mountains over 3,000 feat), plus most of the English, Welsh and Irish peaks. Real outdoor heroes.

Outdoor Swimmer, April 2018.

Read more in Outdoor Swimmer, Issue 13, April 2018.

Adventure Films Underground

Doorway inviting adventurers to a night of film in the Rotherhithe shaft.

London based Secret Adventures hosts all manner of 'off grid' events for urban dwellers in search of excitement. Set up on networking site Meetup in 2014, its adventures include everything from kayaking up the Thames at night, secret swims,​ to husky sledging in the Arctic Circle.

But the activities also act as a way of connecting with like-minded people and - hopefully - generating ideas for future trips.

This was certainly the case at Adventure Films Underground, a recent venture held at the Brunel museum in Rotherhithe, London. Here, ​in the soot scorched shaft that was the entrance hall to Brunel’s 19th-century tunnel under the Thames, three inspirational films were shown to an excited crowd of thrill-seekers.

First up was The Swimming Granny, a short documentary about Maria á Heygum, an 85-year from the Faroe Islands who swims everyday in the sea. She found it helped cure her postnatal depression when she was a young woman and has been swimming in the sea ever since.
 
​Next on the bill was North of the Sun, a film about two Norwegian surfers who spent nine months on an isolated beach in the Arctic Circle - part of the time in permanent darkness. There was plenty of exciting surfing - and even snowboarding - footage but most inspiring was their ingenuity in constructing a cabin, complete with stove and chimney. Building materials consisted of driftwood and rubbish found on the beach.

Before a short break, Madoc Threipland, founder of Secret Adventures, urged everyone to exchange exploration ideas with at least one other person. I ended up chatting to fellow audience members about new (possibly illegal) wild swims along with places to camp near major cities. There was also a chance to visit the excellent museum.

The second half of the evening saw the screening of And Then We Swam, the tale of two friends who decided to row across the Indian Ocean - despite neither of them ever having actually rowed before. It was a classic 'enthusiastic amateur' escapade, although it certainly contained a few very dark moments. The key lesson though seemed to be learn how to be a strong open water swimmer.

A very enjoyable evening that hopefully left everyone thinking abut future adventures. 

Breca Buttermere swimrun

At the beginning of July, along with teammate Calum Hudson, I took part in Breca Buttermere, one of the most gruelling swimruns in the calendar. It comprises of around 40km of fell running and 6km of swimming across the western fells and lakes of the English Lake District. It was a long, but brilliant, day and a report can be read on the Guardian running blog.

Despite everyone telling me to travel as lightly as possible, I carried a camera round the course - if only to capture the bizarre sight of people running across mountains wearing only a wetsuit and swimming hat. 

Climbing Low Bank after swimming across Crummock Water. Picture: Richard Nelsson

Calum Hudson. Picture: Richard Nelsson

Climbing Low Bank. Picture: Richard Nelsson

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...

Tarnbagging in the Lake District

Tarnbagging is the sport of visiting as many English Lakeland tarns as possible. There are over 300 of them so adventurous walkers have the perfect excuse to visit remote parts of the national park. However, as I point out in a Guardian travel piece, this is hardly a new trend. In November 1959, Harry Griffin, the Guardian's legendary Lakeland Country diarist, reported in the paper that two Grasmere men, Colin Dodgson and Timothy Tyson, had bathed in approximately 463 tarns. Tyson was aged 75 when he finished the challenge.

Brockwell Lido Midwinter swim (again)

A final posting about winter swims. Enjoyable as they can be, all that collective jollity, silly hats and standing around in the cold can sometimes be a bit too much to take. As such, I was planning to give this year's Brockwell Lido Midwinter swim a miss.

However, a combination of the air temperature rising to balmy 10C and curious to see what the repainted pool looked like, saw me once again poolside, waiting to take the winter plunge with fellow South Londoners. And it was great. I really enjoyed the swim (rather than it being an ordeal and excuse for a drink) plus, unlike last year, the atmosphere was very relaxed.

The pool looked fantastic too. The new Mediterranean blue colour made the water look inviting even on a cloudy day. As an aside, I really think the owners of the Lido are missing a trick by not opening up the pool during the winter to members of its gym. The combination of modern gym, outdoor swim and then heated spa pool would have me signing up.

Thanks to athlonejonnie for the picture.

Wim Hof: The Iceman

It's that time of year again when stories appear about people stripping off and jumping into freezing water. Almost every paper has to have at least one picture of a lido or grim looking beach, complete with swimmers wearing silly Santa hats and skin the colour of beetroot. OK, I've done a few these festive dips in my time (and written about them). I was intrigued though by a story in the South China Morning Post (£) about Wim Hof who's going for an icy dip in Hong Kong of all places. The 51-year-old Dutch adventurer is hoping to break his own world record of immersing himself under ice for one hour and 44 minutes.

This is but the latest of Hof's extreme adventures. He has climbed to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro in under two days wearing shorts, and run a full marathon within the Arctic Circle in Finland in temperatures close to minus 20 degrees Celsius - as well as an underwater ice swim. A man of extremes, he's also planning to run 50 kilometres in a desert without drinking water.

Brockwell Lido Midwinter Swim

Saturday morning saw the annual Midwinter Swim take place at Brixton's Brockwell Lido. Over a hundred hardy (foolhardy?) South Londoners took to the freezing water, but only after the ice had been broken. Some frolicked in their bikinis while others were covered head to toe in Neoprene. I opted for the two width swim which felt fine until about 10 metres from the end when everything seemed to go into slow motion. Still, the sun was shining and the showers were hot.

Of course this was but a mere dip. With all the current talk about global temperatures rising and polar ice beginning to melt, I was reminded of Lewis Gordon Pugh's iconic swim in the Arctic. In July 2007 the former lawyer became the first person to complete a long distance swim at the Geographic North Pole, spending nearly 18 minutes in the sub-zero temperature water of a large crack in the ice. Pugh undertook the challenge to highlight the devastating effects of climate change - it was only made possible because over the past few years there has been a dramatic reduction in the extent and thickness of the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean. Watch a video of the swim here.

Back to Christmas 2009 and the British newspapers have already started reporting on the winter dips in silly hats events that take place up and down the country. Today, the FT features some picturesque places to get your kit off, and the rest of Fleet Street will follow over the next week or so.

Swimming across the Hellespont

I came across Robson Green's Wild Swimming Adventure on ITV, last night. It could have done with a little more of Robson actually swimming, rather than waffling on about it, and the filler stuff about how well he fills his trunks should have been cut.

However, all was forgiven with the final swim in Snowdonia's Llynn LLydaw, the coldest lake in Britain. Anyone who's tried a bit of open water swimming will know exactly how the Geordie actor felt as he staggered out of the water after covering a kilometre 'bareback' in the freezing water.

Next week's episode includes a swim across the Gulf of Corryvreckan with the assistance of SwimTrek's Simon Murie. In fact SwimTrek have just emailed to say that next year sees the bicentennial of Lord Byron's swim across the Hellespont (now called the Dardanelles), the fabled strait which connects the Aegean Sea in the north-east to the Propontis (Sea of Marmora), and divides Europe from Asia.

Following the swim, on May 3 1810, Byron wrote, Written After Swimming from Sestos to Abydos. My favourite verse is:

For me, degenerate modern wretch,
Though in the genial month of May,
My dripping limbs I faintly stretch,
And think I've done a feat to-day

There was little about the swim in the Observer (the Guardian started publishing in 1821), but 11 years later, it published a letter from Byron where he defended himself against the accusation that he swam the easiest route across the Hellespont. Apparently Leander, the lover from Greek mythology who swam the strait to meet his mistress Hero, did it both ways, with and against the tide. Some people are never satisfied.

Observer, April 30 1821:

(click to enlarge)