I am slow on the uptake

[triskellian]

I have been living here for thirteen years, complaining about how far away we are from the sea, and I'm only just starting to realise that we've got quite a lot of river, and some of it is swimmable

Comments

[chrisvenus]

Funnily enough this comes a mere few weeks after a friend of mine took up river swimming... I think he mentioned having joined facebook purely because there is a group there to organise this sort of thing... Want me to look up details?

[triskellian]

As it happens, I already know who he is, because I spotted someone else joining that group, went to look, and saw someone in Oxford with whom I have mutual friends ;-)

[chrisvenus]

Ah, excellent. Well that saves me a certain amount of effort having to go look things up anyway. :)

[triskellian]

I've "shared" the group with you on Facebook.

So are you up for some Isis swimming? I've been assuming I'd have to go on my own for repeat performances...

[chrisvenus]

Chris having passed me a link to this thread, I'm the random person Chris knew about who goes swimming in the Thames. Only a sample size of one, but so far I've not found any of those deadly reeds (just friendly ones) and the mud has been quite soft and kind to the toes. Generally if it gets a bit shallow, muddy, or reedy I just float on the surface and let the current carry me on my way. It does help if you're a reasonably confident swimmer in the first place, though, and as comfortable in the water as on land.

The scariest thing so far was the entire flock of Port Meadow geese being chased into the water by an enthusiastic dog yesterday and coming to a very loud honking landing right next to me. The most painful was not paying attention to where I was going and walking barefoot through a patch of nettles, which has to be a pasttime especially invented by sadists for masochists...

--Tim