Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page. I was planning to do The Great North Swim in Windermere in July but The Great British weather did its thing and I was gutted to learn that the event was cancelled.

As everyone had been so incredibly generous with donations, the least I could do was persuade a few friends to come and support me in a home-grown swim so we headed off to Thruipmuir Reservoir in the Pentland Hills last Saturday (29th September) to go swim a mile to really earn your fantastic donations.

Ross, Eva and Annie (with Digga and Freddi the dogs) provided surface suport (flasks of tea and hot water bottles and the like) whilst Roger, Linda and I braved the cold water (don’t be fooled by the sunshine in the photos!) and swam (an almost enjoyable if not absolutely freezing) mile - as verified by our surface support team :-) Thanks to all those who supported!

For those of you interested in our time - we have absolutely no idea! We were to busy chatting and shivering to notice but I'm sure that Kerri-anne Payne needs to watch her back!

Thank you all for your donations - over a thousand pounds to Wadale Mountain Rescue - an amazing response from mine and Kirsty's friends and family. I think Kirsty would be touched.

I'm grateful to those of you who passed details of my folly to others who have kindly donated. If you were able to let those folk know that the swim is now complete, I'd be grateful.

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I am planning to do the British Gas Great Northern Swim on 23rd June in Windermere -1 mile in the open-water.

Now, I'm new to open-water swimming (unless you count the occasional dip in an underground lake/river/sump!) and the training for the event has been interesting (tough/hilarious/cold etc. etc.). Thanks to the many friends who have been dragged into snow-melt in Scottish lochs to help me out and to those who have remained dry but have encouraged me on.

Here's hoping for calm, warm weather on the 23rd!

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