Downstream

by Caitlin Davies

  At first they tried to ensure that swimmers wore wetsuits, of which Tom is a big fan. ‘There is a snobbish anti-wetsuit attitude, but it means you can swim in comfort, and you’re quicker and more buoyant.’ If entrants wear wetsuits then fewer safety canoes are needed, and even insurance is cheaper.

  ‘When it dawns on the masses how good wetsuits are people will want to do it, it’s a lovely bit of kit,’ says Tom, who believes the resurgence in open-water swimming is thanks to wetsuits: ‘if you wear one then if you get into trouble you will float.’ But many swimmers were horrified at the idea. ‘We tried making wetsuits compulsory but the venom and the vitriol! The “skins” wrote saying how pissed off they were; they said, “it’s ridiculous, we pay good money . . .” We got lots of emails.’ So now wetsuits are optional, unless the water is below 14 degrees.

  Henley today hosts a series of annual river races, thanks to ex-rowers Tom Kean and Jeremy Laming whose pre-dawn dip in 2004 led to the formation of an open-water events company.

  The Classic is a 2.1-kilometre endurance upstream swim, held over the regatta course, and competitors have included multiple winner Greg Whyte, four times Iron Man legend Chrissie Wellington and Olympian Toby Garbett. The Henley Mile is an upstream swim, and more of a family day with children’s events, while the Bridge to Bridge is fourteen kilometres from Henley-on-Thames to Marlow. The Bridge to Bridge is now becoming as popular as the Classic; in 2012, 176 competitors took part, with finishing times ranging from two hours fifty minutes to just over six hours, but it’s ‘more about the personal challenge and team spirit, rather than a race’. Swimmers are organised into groups of approximately twenty, based on the speed with which they reach the first lock at Hambledon. The swims have various categories – elite, performance (men and women), then open men and then women. To begin with the elite was split into men and women, but the faster women were catching the slower men and weren’t getting a good race, ‘so we changed it, each year we’re learning something’. People declare their time beforehand, in order to get into the right category, but men often overestimate their time, while women tend to underestimate theirs.

  While some are put off by weeds and mud – and the sensation of weeds underfoot can cause panic – it’s the possibility of drowning that is the real fear for the organisers. ‘What we expect is that someone will drown,’ says Tom, ‘what is likely is hypothermia. What may happen is a heart attack.’ They have already had people with hypothermia. ‘The Bridge to Bridge swim can be quite long and we had to nearly haul one woman out, and have the medics ready. You can get hypothermia even in warm water because the body is losing heat.’ One year a woman got knocked on the head during a scrum at the start. ‘She said she didn’t see the starting line, although it had a laser light on it, and she found herself at the front end of a wave of people. Someone swam on top of her, clouted her on the head and she went under and swallowed water. She came to the side and started throwing up. She was very close to being drowned. She recovered and said she was fine to carry on but the safety guys said no. She later collapsed in the shower with concussion, and was grateful we’d stopped her. Usually people drown because they’re doing something silly, then they panic and when you panic you’re done for. Panic is like temper, you have no control.’

  But as for currents and streams, Tom says they are minimal; ‘there are myths and misunderstandings but if you’re not drunk and showing off then it’s fine. If you’re a sober and sensible swimmer then it’s not true about the currents, but if you’re cold and drunk . . .’ He has written to the press to challenge assertions from the PLA that the Thames has fast-running tides and eddies that can drag you under. ‘It would be very helpful to dispel some of these urban myths . . . we are seeing a massive increase in interest for “wild swimming”, and it is only a matter of time before someone gets injured or worse. If we can highlight good river etiquette, we may save the odd life. Joining a club is the first and easiest thing to do.’

  As for the quality of the water, he is ‘a keen believer that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. I’ve never had Thames belly and I swim all the time. In ten years I’ve never been ill because of the river. I don’t get cut, I’ve never swum into something dead, I’ve never seen major litter, but people have to realise it’s a living, breathing environment.’ The Henley Swim now pay a private company to test the water, ‘because people expect us to. There’s going to be stuff in there and people need to accept that. It’s a moderately organic tasting and smelling environment. It tastes and smells like it looks, a live habitat, it’s not chlorinated.’

  Henley Swim was recently invited to join the Marlow Rowing Club and create a hub for water sports; ‘we have funding from Sports England and planning permission for a state of the art club by the bridge,’ says Tom. ‘It’s the dawn of a new era of swimming clubs.’

  I leave him in the museum’s café and head back to the station along the river. While the old swimming spots have been closed down in Oxford, and river racing has died out in Reading, the story of the Thames is slightly different in Henley. This is the first place I’ve been where a club has been formed especially for swimming in the river and where a swim taken just for fun between two friends now attracts hundreds of people every year. Henley once again has a culture of swimming, and it hasn’t been replaced by rowing after all. Instead, two rowers have reintroduced people to the river and, with their annual swims, created a new ‘capital institution for Henley’.

  7

  Marlow–Cookham–Maidenhead

  ‘For, O, the water’s deep and clear

  That flows by Marlow town!’

  J. Ashby-Sterry, ‘A Marlow Madrigal’, 1886

  In Victorian times there was ‘no more fascinating spot’ on the River Thames than Marlow, declared Dickens’s Dictionary of the Thames. It was the perfect place for boating, camping holidays or ‘sketching purposes’, and the water teemed with fish. Jerome K. Jerome found Marlow ‘one of the pleasantest river centres I know of’, where people ‘bathe before breakfast’. Yet while the town, eight miles downstream from Henley along the Thames Path, had tennis, cricket and football clubs, as well as a river regatta, as with Lechlade I can find few archival references to swimming.

  In the summer of 1866 a one-mile race was held on the Marlow Reach, as well as ‘several other swimming and diving matches from the Suspension Bridge’, although the Annual Regatta and Aquatic Sports in the 1890s included only one swimming event, ‘the Canadian Canoe Race’, in which competitors had to stand and ‘paddle to the ryepeck’, and then swim back with their canoe. Other mentions of the Thames at Marlow tend to concern drownings, such as the family tragedy that occurred in July 1906 when a father and his two sons, all accomplished swimmers, went down to the river. One of the sons sank suddenly ‘while attempting to swim the river a second time’ and his brother and father perished while trying to rescue him.

  Marlow is the modern setting for a mass-participation swim organised by Human Race, whose founder John Lunt says the Thames is ‘the cleanest metropolitan river in Europe’.

  In more modern times, however, Marlow is notable for two reasons: an official ban on swimming in the Thames, and more recently the launch of a mass swimming event. In June 1960 the Daily Mirror reported, ‘Education chiefs last night BANNED school bathing at a Thames beauty spot. The order went to head teachers of schools at Marlow, the picture-postcard Buckinghamshire market town.’ Samples of river water had been ‘analyzed and found to be POLLUTED’. The Education Authority had acted on the advice of the Medical Officer of Health; parents were urged to stop their children swimming in the Thames, which was ‘filthy’, and where they risked ‘dreadful diseases from sewage’. While schoolchildren had long been taught to swim in the Thames – at Tumbling Bay in Oxford, King’s Meadow in Reading and Solomon’s Hatch in Henley – and although Marlow residents once bathed before breakfast, now they were being actively warned to stay away from the river or risk dreadful consequences.


  But we never seem to stay away for too long and thanks to the rise in triathlons today Marlow is the setting for a swim organised by Human Race, the largest mass participation events company in the UK, who promise that ‘taking to the water from the grassy banks [will be] an unforgettable experience’. Human Race runs triathlon and cycling events, as well as six open-water swims, three of which are held on the Thames – at Marlow, Windsor and Hampton Court. ‘We chose the Thames because of a whole raft of reasons,’ explains John Lunt, who founded the company in 1990, including the fact the river was on his doorstep and he knew it well. An experienced triathlete who has raced ‘all over the world’, he’s originally from Lancashire but moved to Kingston in 1983. ‘The Thames is the cleanest metropolitan river in Europe,’ he says, ‘we knew salmon had been seen, and there is less industry now, and we thought, let’s go for it . . . And now we’ve been doing it for twenty-four years.’

  In the early days, ‘people thought swimmers were a bit mad, the running boom had just started and when the London Marathon was first held in 1981 triathlon was in its infancy, people thought you were crazy even if you jogged on a street. River users had learnt to swim in the Thames when people couldn’t afford pools, and they weren’t surprised by our swims, but now there is a more risk-averse culture.’

  Around 2,000 people take part annually in Human Race’s swims on the Thames. Competitors vary: ‘the madcap open-water swimmers do it for the hell of it, anywhere, any time, any place’, then there are general swimmers who want a new challenge, as well as novice open-water people. Human Race’s official charity is Cancer Research UK and entrants are invited to make a donation and offered a charity fundraising pack. While most people do raise money, ‘they are not compelled to, it’s secondary to the challenge’. Ninety-nine per cent finish the set course and he says it’s rare that anyone drops out, because ‘if people are not happy then they don’t start’. Ten to 20 per cent are no-show, usually because they ‘haven’t trained enough’, but once they start they finish. There have been no heart attacks, ‘touch wood, and no near-death experiences’. John believes one reason for this may be that ‘our database is more the hardcore swimmers’ whereas in other mass events entrants ‘may be less well conditioned and possibly less prepared’.

  At Marlow there are three events, 750 metres, 1,500 metres and three kilometres, all starting and finishing upstream from the bridge. There are minimum age requirements, as well as cut-off times, and entrants must sign a declaration that they are aware of ‘a risk to health associated with swimming in open water and that there is a chance that participants may contract illness from competing in such water’. They need to be ‘aware of the physically strenuous nature’ of the event and fit and healthy enough to take part.

  ‘When we started there were hardly any mass swims in the Thames,’ says John, ‘there’s been an explosion in the last two years. Other race organisers thought it would be easy, but there is a wide range of safety cover levels.’

  F3 Events also run mass swims at Marlow. The company was established in 2006 and the Thames was chosen because ‘all our staff are born and raised in the Thames Valley with an interest in triathlon,’ explains a spokesperson. He says safety is ‘one of the main items on the agenda’ and ‘we go overboard with safety boats when swimmers are in the water’.

  In 2012, when the Thames was ‘red boarded’ (with warning signs placed on locks to advise boat users against using the river), they ‘held off till the last moment as it was the day of our Olympic/standard triathlon in Marlow. We waited thirty minutes prior to the race start to get the last official word from the EA before proceeding; we also shortened the course on safety grounds’. F33 hold swims at Henley-on-Thames and Windsor and on average 350–500 people compete in each event. ‘We get a mixed bag, from total amateurs to the most experienced elite athletes and celebs; in the build-up to David Walliams’ swim he attended many of our river swims as training.’

  Downstream from Marlow, the village of Cookham is another favourite spot for swimmers. This was ‘earthly paradise’ for artist Stanley Spencer who painted numerous river scenes and wrote in 1917, ‘we all go down to Odney Weir for a bathe and a swim . . . I feel fresh, awake and alive; that is the time for visitations.’ Ella Foote, who recently moved to Cookham from Maidenhead, says there are lots of beaches where it’s easy to walk into the river. She used to go canoeing on the Thames, but as a child she was told it was a dirty place and didn’t think of swimming in it. When she first started outdoor swimming around 2007 there were few mass swims open to people of different abilities; ‘it’s gone a bit mental in the last three years, before that there were elite swims and you needed wetsuits’. Her love of Thames swimming came from a desire to raise money for charity. ‘I did a Race for Life run and hated it. I thought there must be another way to have a challenge and do something that’s actually enjoyable. The British Heart Foundation were doing a swim in Brighton, it was the only charity offering a swim then, but the tide changed, I was inexperienced and doing breaststroke and I was told by security to get out! So then I really started looking for other ways to swim.’

  ‘Swimming in the Thames was a thrilling experience’: Ella Foote pictured at Pinewood Studios during her 30 Memorable Swims Project.

  About two years ago Ella joined the OSS and took part in a swim upstream on the Thames at Sonning. ‘I thought, why haven’t I done this sooner? It was just lovely. I was really surprised how clear the water was. It looks very still, it’s only when you get in you realise there are strong currents underneath. I was a little frightened by boats. We wore bright swim hats, but when a long narrow boat is coming at you, they don’t know you’re there.’ But over all she found it ‘a thrilling experience and I was hooked. I was nervous about weeds but apart from the shallow area, it was fine. I have to say I am a nervous Thames swimmer when the river is high and fast – I prefer it a bit calmer.’

  Ella joined the Henley Open Water Swimming Club, which helped with her training for a Channel relay swim in 2012. The following year she completed thirty swims to celebrate her thirtieth birthday, including some in the Thames such as the Henley Classic. ‘I’ve made so many friends through random swimming. It is slightly risky, the water is cold, there’s a fast flow, and, let’s face it, it’s taken a few people’s lives, and you’re doing it with people you don’t know. But it’s comforting; it’s a community of swimmers.’

  A couple of miles downriver is Maidenhead, which, unlike Marlow, has a long river-racing tradition and a club that was formed in Victorian times. This was once ‘the haunt of the river swell and his overdressed female companion’, according to Jerome K. Jerome, and ‘the witch’s kitchen from which go forth those demons of the river – steam-launches’. Boulter’s Lock, just east of Maidenhead, first built in 1772 and then rebuilt in 1828, was certainly a busy place in Victorian times and the press reported several ‘Alarming Accidents’. On one Whit Monday, 1,200 boats and punts and 106 launches passed through the lock and several holidaymakers ended up in the river when their canoes capsized or were ‘run into’ by a steam launch. The artist Edward Gregory spent several years painting the spot in the late 1880s and his Boulter’s Lock, Sunday Afternoon shows a traffic jam of boating parties passing through the narrow lock, a scene of happy mayhem with oars, punts and sails, and everyone decked out in their Sunday best.

  As for swimmers, during a ‘Volunteer Encampment’ in 1863, 500 men pitched their tents at Maidenhead and ‘owing to the close proximity of the river Thames, it is expected a cold bath will be the order of the morning’. Weeds had ‘been cut for some distance, and a portion of the water roped off for those who cannot swim, added to which men will be in attendance each morning with boats’.

  But far more organised was the ‘River Race’ or ‘Long Swim’, run by the Maidenhead Amateur Swimming Club. The club appears to have been formed in the early 1890s, around the same time as Reading’s, first holding swimming entertainments at the Grand Hall Swimming Bath. By 189
4 it was running an annual sports day in Kidwells Park to raise funds, where 1,200 spectators watched a one-mile handicap and a ‘consolation race’. Then in 1897 the club decided to switch venues, agreeing at its annual meeting that ‘members should leave the Grand Hall Bath, and bathe and swim in the river instead’. They were now negotiating with the Rowing Club ‘for the use of their boathouse’ in the early mornings, and a few months later the club held its annual event, called the Swimming Competition, Carnival, and Cycle Gymkhana, in the grounds of ‘The Fishery’. Events included a tortoise race, swimming handicaps, diving, a clothes race and ‘a splendid exhibition of swimming by Mr. W. Jenkins, formerly of Maidenhead, including imitation of torpedo, swimming on chest feet first, and many different styles of swimming’. This was followed by dancing and an open-air concert on the riverfront.

  The club’s move to the Thames was highly successful and their river races were held every year until the late 1960s, except in wartime. It began with a two-mile course for men and then a one-mile course for women, both usually held in the evening in late summer to mark the end of the season. The original course for the men’s race, up until 1914, was from Cookham to Boulter’s Lock, there was then a break until 1923 when the course was changed to run from Boulter’s Lock to Bray, while the women’s race ran from Boulter’s Lock to Maidenhead Bridge. Now women weren’t just swimming in the Thames during segregated hours at official bathing spots – they were racing against each other, too, with competitors diving in from the Boulter’s pontoon, each accompanied by a safety boat.