This weekend (20 July) we headed down to the 2019 Edition of Henley Swim’s Club to Pub. For those of you that haven’t heard of it before it is a genius idea where you swim to an actual pub! I have only done this swim once before, back in 2014 but Manda and other Team Mermaids’ friends have done it a number of times before.
We headed out of London at 4pm with Pivo sat in the back. We were having a lovely time chatting about all things swimming when we realised that Pivo had put in his ear phones and was listening to his music. This made us think that our podcast idea ‘Driving to Swimming’ is not such a great idea…
We arrived at Henley Rowing Club for the start and met up with Kate and her bump who had travelled down from Bristol.
We were in mixed wave 1 which was setting off at 7.20pm so we watched on the side as the first three waves set off. The day before I had been muttering something about a wetsuit when Manda piped up say ‘I’m not wearing mine, I’ve entered skins’ it was with a dawning sense of trepidation that I checked my entry email to find out that I also had entered skins – clearly peer pressured into it at the time! I needn’t have worried though as the water was lovely. Swimming skins also gave us the opportunity to test out the Funkita ECO C-INFINITY swim costumes which we are trialling for Outdoor swimmer. Given these costumes are made from recycled plastic they seemed fitting for a river swim.
The 1.5km swim course starts at the Rowing club where you swim for about 500m upstream before turning round and swimming downstream to the Angel On the Bridge Pub. There had been heavy rains the night before and on getting in you could really feel the current pulling you back as we waited at the start line. Suddenly it was the 15s count down and we were off! Manda and I set off together and it felt like we were making good progress but every time you looked up the bouys didn’t seem like they were getting any closer. We finally made it to the turn point. I was on the upstream side of Manda and promptly got pushed straight into her by the current – sorry! The final leg down stream was lovely even if the setting sun did make it difficult to sight at times. At the finish we were greeted by Anne (TM #1 fan!) and Chris, Kate’s parent and it was time for a burger and a drink!
We would definitely recommend this swim for people looking for a relaxed, fun and well organised event.
TEAM Mermaids 