This year I celebrate my 50th birthday and I was thinking of doing a few things to mark the year. I decided I wanted to do something fifty times and it seemed that swimming was always going to be a part of any challenge. Here's the plan, and the rules: I'll swim a mile a day for 50 consecutive days. I'll swim in 50 different swimming pools in and around London. I'll only swim in public pools and ponds and lidos. No private gyms and health clubs for me. I want to revisit many of the old swimming haunts that I've swum in over the years, and many new and surprising venues as well. And I want to embrace all the great things about doing a solitary activity in such a public environment. I'm starting on 1st March and hope to finish by around mid April.

And I thought that whilst doing it I might be able to do someone else some good along the way. A very dear friend of mine's mum is being treated at the Royal Marsden at the moment. I'd like to show my support for all of them - my dear friend, his mum, the doctors and nurses and everyone who cares for them - along the way. 

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Ooh. And thank you to Andrew Shaylor for taking such a lovely photo above...