I'm swimming the English Channel sometime from 7th July this year! After that, I'm going to Maui to be part of an attempt to swim around Maui, as a call to action for global ocean health. (Due to the clash in dates, I won't be able to swim the whole way around Maui, but the team which I'm a part of will.) Along the way, I'm raising as much money as I can for Surfers Against Sewage! I'll post updates on Instagram, and here when I remember!

Summer is approaching. I have fond memories throughout childhood and adulthood of spending time in the sea, or having paddles in a stream or river on a walk... but the reality is that this simple pleasure is often no longer safe for people in the UK. As a nation surrounded by water, it astounds me that we're not taking better care of our own back yard.

Water companies are literally pumping poo into our most beautiful waters, and then making sweet sweet profit. It's disgusting, for more reason than one.

75% of UK rivers pose a serious risk to human health, with not a single stretch of river in England or Northern Ireland being in good health.

It's contributing to huge biodiversity losses, polluting beautiful World Heritage sites, and causing people to get seriously ill.

Water companies aren't even properly measuring their own leaks, and when they do, they often report incidents late, which stops the impact of the leak being accurately monitored. Historically, like many people, I believed we were pretty safe to swim when there wasn't much rain, because sewage companies wouldn't be releasing raw sewage, right??? Right??? Not right. There's sewage dumping happening even when there's no rainfall. And the truth is, we don't even know the full scale of the issue because water companies across the UK aren't all obliged to report. They often fudge incidents to make them seem smaller than they are.

Surfers Against Sewage campaign for better water for all of us, and they're about more than just surfing and sewage (although that's where it started! They aren't just about safeguarding surf locations, they're also helping people protect their local wild water spots! Sewage pollution is a huge topical issue, but they also work on plastic pollution, ocean recovery and the climate emergency.

With a general election coming up, this is an opportunity for real change. But change doesn't happen without people in our country speaking up for our water, and that's what SAS are doing!

They're a charity I love, and hopefully you'll like what they're doing enough to send them a few pennies too! :)