The English Riviera Magazine has published an article on our BLDSA Torbay swim event run this year by Steve & Helen Price. Please click the link below to read this wonderful review of the day written by one of the support kayakers.

https://bldsa.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Sea-Swim-Aug192.pdf

Dear Amanda
I have been meaning to drop you a line following Sunday’s event…
Colwick was my first BLDSA swim and as such I wanted to thank you and everyone responsible for organising such a brilliant event.
Having participated in a fair few organised events in recent years, my experience in Nottingham was – by a long way – the most welcoming! 
I hadn’t realised how much of a difference it makes but as someone who tends to turn up on their own (and not uncommonly in a very real minority as a skins swimmer) how you greeted and briefed swimmers on Sunday was, to my mind, a winning recipe combining real warmth and great efficiency!
Thank you for a fantastically organised and thoroughly enjoyable event (after spending the first 3k working hard to ignore the dreary internal voice telling me to retire after 3 laps of the lake – thank goodness for Michelle!) 
What a nice bunch of serious swimmers you are… I feel I may have happened upon ‘my tribe’. Now I need to work on my stroke…! 
I look forward to getting more involved with the BLDSA (and hope in time to build my stamina for longer events!)
Very best, Cecilia 

Results online NOW!

ANNUAL DINNER 2019

At this year’s Annual Dinner, two donations were made to two different charities.

Each year we have a fun event to raise funds for UNICEF.  Martyn Coates has produced an original and exciting game to play to raise money for this charity.  The eventual winner of the Enoch Tarder trophy, which is presented in memory of Maurice Ferguson for the winner, was Margaret Smith.  This game raised £75.00 for the charity.

As most of you will know, a raffle is held at the Dinner and £170.00 was raised following sales of plenty of raffle tickets.  Jane Bell, our Dinner Secretary, offered to pass on the funds this year to a charity which provides support to one of our swimmers and her family – Helen Beveridge.

Helen’s response to this is below:

“I would like to say a huge thank you to all at the BLDSA Awards dinner last week for the generous donation of the raffle proceeds to Niemann-Pick UK https://www.npuk.org/

NPUK is a small charity which supports those affected by Niemann-Pick disease.  As many will know, mainly due to Shona’s starring role on the One Show Rickshaw Challenge for Children in Need 2017, two of my three daughters are affected by Niemann-Pick type C, a very rare neurodegenerative disease which currently has no cure and no approved therapies.  We got the first diagnosis a week before my Loch Ness swim in 2016 and I spent the swim trying to come to terms with the new future for our family – at least I wasn’t just thinking about the cold for 18+ hours!

NPUK has been a huge support practically and emotionally to my girls and to the whole family.  Your donation means a great deal to me, my family and the other affected individuals and families supported by this amazing small charity.  Thank you all so much.”