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.

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.