Our friend Gerry was to join us for our last swim. He had just completed the 22 mile channel distance in the local Purbeck Leisure Centre pool over a 6 day period. As we arrived at the pool, the rain started to fall but there was still a lot of patrons there. Bryn Dymott was there with his family. I had met Bryn on the previous Sunday and we had swum from Sandown to Shanklin on the Isle of Wight together after the official race had been cancelled. We stood chatting for a while with a group of ladies who were in charge. We were soon joined by Jo Harding, chairman of the trust that runs the pool and who had given us such a warm welcome last time. Jo was again lovely and quickly offered to put a lane in for us. The pool was heated to 26 degrees centigrade and we quickly swam the 60 lengths required. Now Gerry has this little reputation with his navigation and I must confess that I have been known to clatter into the odd swimmer in my time. However, it was not until just completing my penultimate length that we collided. I could not stop smiling as I swam down the final length of my 100 mile challenge.
The swim complete, we got out to warm congratulations and the offer of a hot coffee. I was able to show Jo and Alison, the diary I had kept of all our swims. We chatted for a while about how other pools operated and what they did to fund raise and keep going. It was time to leave and head back to Dorset where Diana had cooked a great celebratory supper for us. Sally (with Bella) joined us for the meal and we were able to reminisce on two joyful summers revisiting our youth.
This has been a wonderful challenge full of twists and turns. We have met some lovely people and greatly enjoyed their warmth and friendship. I have promised Diana that there will be no more challenges, at least for a little while anyway….
Diana and I started our journey from Wolverhampton to drive to South Wales leaving plenty of time to arrive at the pool by 12 noon where we were to meet Dave and Sally who had stayed overnight in Hereford. We were well on our way along the A40 when a tyre on one of the back wheels burst and we had to pull over onto the side of the road. It was a very scary 15 minutes, which I took to change the wheel and get us back on our way. As this was only a temporary wheel, we had to limit our speed to 80 kilometres per hour. Distracted by all this we found ourselves on our way to the M4 and taking a more southerly route to Brynamman than originally intended. Arriving at 1pm we found that Dave and Sally had already managed to get friendly with local kids. Jackie, Cassie and Matt were looking after the pool, which did not appear to be heated. We received a lovely warm Welsh welcome and spent a delightful hour at the pool swimming our mile and chatting to our hosts.
We were able to find a roadside café for snack. The café was run by a Welsh Italian and proudly displayed the welsh shirt as worn by Gareth Edwards a local legend around these parts. Hunger satisfied we headed back to Dorset via Neath to change the tyre. We had now completed our 99th. pool: almost there!
After swimming Hathersage, Diana and I were able to enjoy the wonderful gardens of Chatsworth House on our way to Matlock Bath. We had decided to swim this pool to support David Mitchell and the Friends of Matlock Bath even though it was not listed in Liquid Assets. David and his fellow enthusiasts had been instrumental in keeping the New Bath Hotel pool open to the public who are now able to use it on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays during the summer months. The pool itself is fed by natural spring water at around 20 degrees centigrade and is in a beautifully open and peaceful area surrounded by trees.
David greeted us at poolside and introduced us to a local press reporter who took a few photos of us before our swim. We managed to swim our mile in good time accompanied by a few swimmers from the “friends”. As we had no other pools to swim that day, we were able to relax and enjoy the peace and serenity of our surroundings.
David invited us back to his bookshop where we enjoyed a cup of coffee and a cake in the café there. What a fascinating place with over 40,000 new and 40,000 old and antiquarian books on offer, an Aladdin’s cave for any book enthusiast!
After our experiences earlier that morning, it was real pleasure to meet a real enthusiast for our challenge and for outdoor pools generally.
We are ready!
I have already said that that we would revisit Hathersage and so we did. You may remember if you have read the earlier parts of this diary that we attempted to swim this pool at the end of July when we made our trip up north to swim in Cumbria, Scotland, Northumberland and Yorkshire. On that day, we arrived at Hathersage in early afternoon after a difficult journey across the Derbyshire Peak District from Nantwich. There was a queue of people outside waiting to get in and it transpired that the pool was full and they were only allowing the first in the queue to enter when someone left. We were on a tight schedule and after chatting with the friendly people in the queue, knocked the door. Eventually Angie Plank the pool manager appeared. We explained our quest to swim a mile in every lido in the UK for Save the Children Fund and could we possibly come in to complete our mile, please? The answer from Angie was a flat NO! Dave said that we had driven 300 miles especially to swim in her pool, still NO! I offered to swim gentle head-up breaststroke, still NO! This lady was not for moving and we had to accept that if we wanted to complete our task, we would have to come back another day. If we had waited we would have missed swimming Ilkley and Ingleton later that afternoon.
Undaunted, I telephoned the pool the following week. A friendly pool attendant answered and told me that they had a small accident and the pool had been emptied. Someone had left a valve open over night and that water had simply drained away. He was confident that the pool would be full and in use by the following weekend.
As I was away managing a channel relay team during the week before our second attempt to swim this pool, Dave rang Angie again to check that we could swim and she confirmed that it would be possible but it had to be 8.30am in the morning when a lane was in. We were both up for this and Dave and Sally arranged local B&B accommodation after visiting Dave’s daughter in Sheffield. Diana and I were coming from Wolverhampton having stayed overnight with our daughter Samantha. The journey seemed to last for ever and took over 2 ½ hours against the AA estimate of under 2 hours, hence we arrived at 9am. Meanwhile, poor Dave had been pleading with the pool supervisor Lee for us to swim anyway. Dave had given an interview to Radio Derbyshire the night before and put a positive spin on the pool and as part of the negotiations suggested that he would like to put a further good word in when they interviewed him again at 8.40am.
When we arrived at 9am it was grudgingly agreed that we could after all swim our mile. The pool itself was great with a lovely grandstand and we swam our 54 lengths in good time watched by a couple of friendly lifeguards. Diana sat in the corner watching Lee who was by this time taking a swimming lesson and barking instructions at young Dominic in the process.
We wondered whether we would have been able to swim this pool if Angie hadn’t taken the day off? When Dave returned to Dorset he found a message on his answer phone from Angie saying that the pool was too busy for her to let us swim.
When I look back over the past year and the hundreds of good people we met during this wonderful challenge, I can hardly believe the reception we got at Hathersage. The lady lifeguard was really nice even chasing after us to the pool café to return Dave’s goggles, which he had left on poolside, but we will remember Angie Plank and pool supervisor Lee for all the wrong reasons. They didn’t seem to realise that not only were we raising money for a worthy cause but we were also attempting raise the profile open-air pools like theirs. We were friends, not foes.
My story of this pool emphasises the fact that our journey has been as much about the people we met than anything else. Hathersage, you couldn’t make up!
I have never been to Skegness and at first sight it looked a happy cheerful place with a real bucket and spade atmosphere. Thanks to dear old satnav and a few locals, we quickly located the pool. We could see it from the outside and it looked very busy. The reception lady was friendly and let us go through to the changing area. We had to walk through the indoor pool, which was a dark and dismal place. Who would want to swim there when they had the great outdoors available? I asked the lifeguard if we could possibly have a lane as the pool was very busy but he couldn’t oblige as he was unable to leave his post. The pool itself was lovely, 25 metres long and in good condition. It took us all our concentration to avoid the many swimmers in the pool and I had to ask a few to move over for us. 64 lengths and a quick change and we were ready for the long 5 hour drive back to Dorset. We had driven nearly 1400 miles on this 5 day tour and swum a mile in 15 lidos . We felt really please with our efforts. Only another 4 to go!
I had rang ahead the previous evening and spoke to Chris the pool manager. He kindly agreed to let us in early at 11am when the pool staff arrived so we had an empty pool to swim in. We had waited half an hour or so on a park bench and watched the boys cricket team practice. Donna, the pool lifeuard arrived at 10.55am and soon had the covers off and the pool ready for us. Dave was particularly perky this morning rattling off a quick mile. He had been for an early morning run at Thirsk where we had stayed overnight so was up for it. Where does this man get is energy from!
