July 2010

A thought:

One of the Labour Government’s achievements was to allow children and older people to swim in public pools for nothing. At the end of this month the Coaltion government will start making them pay again--in order to help save us all from the debt crisis. No doubt it will soon occur to the government that it is not just children and OAPs clogging up the swimming pools who are behind our spiraling debt , but rather that public swimming pools per se are uneconomic and should be turned into blocks of flats or private health clubs for business executives.

Under these circumstances, the solution for the swimming population (if not for the debt crisis), is surely to take up swimhiking. The initial outaly is very modest, and once you have the basic equipment it is entirely free.

Above is a photograph, taken by a friend, of me fulfilling one of my more modest ambitions this summer: swimhiking across Bristol Harbour. (The Harbour Master, who spoke to me on the far bank after I had got out, was not very encouraging about this.)

October 2010

The Olympics

People often say to me ‘Pete, swimhiking really ought to be made an Olympic sport. We should form a deputation and speak to the organising committee for 2016’ etc. etc. Thus far I have always managed to dissaude them. I say that I like the easy going informality of swimhiking, its cameraderie and (I admit it openly) its leisurely pace, always with time for a picnic. All this, I feel would be spoiled if swimhiking were to be suddenly pushed into the glare of the Olympics, and soon we would be embroiled in the same sordid mess of drug-taking and international corporate sponsorship that bedevils all the other pass times that have ‘gone Olympic’. Furthermore, there are many other sports that, like swimhiking create something entirely new by combining two seemingly distinct forms of activity. My personal favourite, and one that I would very much like to see in the Olympics, is hot air balloon jousting.

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