Janet Wilson has been Life member YeAABA for over twenty years. She lives in Yorkshire and has swum in every championship YeAABA has. Janet has been coming to Scotland to swim with us since 1984.  Many of you will know Janet as she kindly travels from Yorkshire to oversee all the first aid training needs.

Janet has many strings to her bow having swum Loch Earn, Loch Rannoch and Loch Lomond.  In England she has swum Windermere, two-way Windermere, Coniston Water and numerous other lakes.  Janet is a true Amphibian (which means land and sea) conquering mountains at home and abroad Ben Nevis, Kilimanjaro, Monte Blanc, Snowdon and base camp on Everest.

In addition to that award Janet has received from her local hospital Volunteer of the Year for all her hard work she has done over this dreadful Covid year.

Janet has been a friend to me for over 35 years and I hope you will join me in congratulating her on her awards.  We are so proud that she is part of us here in Ye Amphibious Ancient Bathing Association.”

Joyce has written a lovely article about Janet and her Investiture and we at the British Long Distance Swimming Association cannot add any more to that.  Of course, we are also so proud that she is part of our Association and travels many miles up and down the country to assist with our swims.  In addition, Janet also delivers our First Aid Training Courses, for which we are very grateful.

What a fabulous weekend of swimming we had in glorious sunshine!  All swimmers finished across both days.  Some outstanding swims came from Pippa Armstrong-Owen who was returning to the BLDSA after a number of years out, Dev Gurung who swam further than he has ever done before and Claire Dummer, a wetsuit swimmer who swam Breaststroke and made us all have tears in our eyes after a mammoth swim of nearly 5 and a half hours.

The swimmers on Sunday were mainly a group of regulars but we had a non-member swim from Kelvin Prescott who was in the Lakes on holiday and just looked about on-line to find something to do and also Cecilia Hazlerigg who came up from London to join us.  Cecilia last swam with the BLDSA at Holyhead so it was lovely to see her again.

This year we were able to source some kayakers for swimmers who needed them.  We have had some fantastic feedback from them and the swimmers and a few comments are shown below:

“I just wanted to say a massive thank you to you and all the team for such an amazing event on Saturday.  My kayaker Michael was amazing and such a support and it felt like a team effort. We must remember that he was sat in the kayak for 5 1/2 hours which is no mean feat.  I am so thankful that the BLDSA helped me realise my dream.”

“Thank you so much for letting me join such an amazing event, i have some lovely memories of the day and I’m amazed at the guys who swim so far. I will be more than happy to help again in the future.”

“Thank you for organising the event in a way that made an end to end trip workable. I know that it’s no mean feat.”

“I am in awe for all the swimmers managing to do such distances without stopping. I can just manage a length of a swimming pool.  It felt so satisfying being able to help someone do their goal and doing what I love as well”

Finally, please take notice of the photograph of the volunteers. This shows some of the volunteers for Sunday – I can count 16 people to look after 9 swimmers. How’s that for a ratio? And I sincerely thank each and every one of them for making the weekend so successful.