Darling Buds of May,
Spring is here, the Thames
has risen and is in full spate, making this a speedy swim -
hopefully not too speedy. According to the flow meter at
Maidenhead rowing club the Thames is running at 164 m3 /
sec today (Tuesday) . (In comparison, on our last swim it was
a mere 11.7 m3 /
sec.) We'll need to do a risk
assessment at the time - probably throw in a stick :-)
Fortunately the exit and lock is at the end of a long cut where
the flow should be minimal.
First the bad news; we won't be able to camp this weekend -
the local campsites won't entertain a single night's camping
over a bank holiday weekend. Given the weather this might not
be such a bad thing after all. Also, following a lot of
deliberation, I've reluctantly rescheduled the date to Monday
as the rain has turned the Thames in to a bit of a monster.
Inspections locally from both Neil's colleague and mine reveal
that the tow path is awash at Abingdon and Culham. The hope is
that by postponing the swim to the end of the weekend the
river will have calmed down. Apologies for deviating from the
planned diary dates but the other option was a cancellation,
which didn't seem a good option either.
So, we will do a single day's swimming on Monday 7th May from
Abingdon Lock to Culham Lock. This will be an approximately
4.15km swim - #34 in Michael Worthington's I
♥
the Thames
We will don our Health and Safety hats (hard, of
course), goggles and protective gloves and assess the risk
on Saturday and send out an update to confirm if we are
still going ahead - this will depend on the flow subsiding,
considerably, which in turn will be dependent on no more
significant rain. Look out for the confirmation e-mail on
Sunday.
We'll meet here in the free car park at Culham at 10:30am
on Monday 7th May 2012:
http://g.co/maps/ynxdp
Get changed, and shuttle up to the car park at Abingdon
Bridge, where we met for the last swim: (Will need money for
parking in this one - £1.20 for 3 hours)
http://g.co/maps/rzf3d
From here it is a relatively short walk (0.75km) to Abingdon
Lock across the fields, where we'll start our swim from:
http://g.co/maps/x77ep
We can have a breather around half way, just past the Marina
entrance on the opposite bank, where there appears to be a
beach of sorts:
http://g.co/maps/v5rh6
ending up at Culham lock next to the car park. From there
we'll repair to the George & Dragon
for a spot of lunch - table is booked for 2:00pm: (Tel:
01235 848142 )
Can you confirm by e-mail if you will be staying for lunch?
http://g.co/maps/an9n4
Sef & Jeremy and the Barbus barbus of the Isis isis.
OSS swim
responsibility statement:
By attending
you confirm that you are a member of the OSS and have read and
accepted the OSS swim responsibility statement:
All swimmers
swim at their own risk.