Tooting Bec is the second largest pool in Europe at a whopping 90x30 meters. It’s also freshwater, unheated and bit of a legend in the world of London Lidos. Before the challenge the three of us had all been a bit wimpy about unheated pools as our reaction to Uxbridge temperature confirmed however when we arrived at Tooting Bec we were still running late and so just didn’t have time to be wimps.
The size of the pool is slightly awe inspiring and at 6pm on a Friday evening after torrential rain there were only a couple of other swimmers in the water. Considering the brisk nature of the water their speed was impressive and when Pete saw one of them break into Butterfly we decided they were definitely Triathletes.
Gritting our teeth we jumped in and swam 5 lengths trying to go as fast as possible before we froze and sank to the bottom. Once again the temperature actually felt quite good once the cold shock had worn off but we were all chuffed that we’d saved our second dry towel for Tooting Bec.
The huge pool seems to dwarf even a large number of swimmers and with so few of us in the pool it almost felt like we were alone in the pool. After the heavy rain the sun was making an evening appearance and there was a feeling of calm and stillness broken only by the sound of trains passing every so often. Overall it was a seriously amazing experience although on the way back to the Tube stop Libi did confess that in both Uxbridge and Tooting she had been keeping as close to the edge as possible just in case she got so cold she sank and the Lifeguards didn’t fancy jumping in to rescue her!
We swam a total of 1402.75 m and thanks to the Support of Tooting Bec Lido we were able to £9.60 to the Sponsorship page.
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