Saturday 4pm - Highgate Men's Bathing Pond

As we crossed the Heath the drizzle that had been falling when we left the Mixed Pond suddenly became a downpour and those of us who had opted to change out of our wet swimsuits for the short walk realised our mistake since we were all so wet that getting into the next pond wasn’t going to get us any wetter.

There had been warm showers at neither the Serpentine nor the Mixed Pond and without a tube journey to warm ourselves up we all found ourselves feeling the cold especially as we faced two more unheated pools before the warm showers at Parliament Hill. For the first time we found ourselves losing much of our humour and texts from fair-weather swimming friends excusing themselves from the challenge did little to lift our spirits.

We came to the Men’s Pond first and the boys turned off down the path only realising later that Pete, who had stayed behind at the Mixed Pond to chat to his family, had taken a wrong turning in the downpour and was wandering round the Heath lost in the rain and feeling even worse than the rest of us.

He was eventually found by some friendly park rangers north of the ladies pond and made up for his late arrival diving from the board and cutting a few corners of the pond.

For some reason the boys told us Highgate Men’s Pond

was the warmest of the unheated pools and warmer by far than the supposedly heated Park Rd Pools although we don’t know if that was just to make Jo and Libi jealous since they found Kenwood Ladies Pond anything but warm!

At Highgate Men’s pond the boys swam 1480m and, thanks to the management were able to donate £10 to the sponsorship fund.