For once, it wasn’t a ridiculously early start for our adventure to London, we met at just gone 8am at the train station, there were only 2 of us going to celebrate International Womans Day. I had booked assistance in advance. We were helped onto the train and on our way to the Love Open Water venue at the London Docks. When we arrived at King’s Cross, sadly, there was no one with a ramp to help me off the train, but Mandy managed to find someone to help. From there, the journey was pretty smooth, I couldn’t help but get excited. We got off the train at Custom House train station and started walking towards the Docks. When we arrived I spotted my friend John who had come to say hello and get some nice photos!
This venue is somewhere I have wanted to swim at for a while but I had never worked out getting there and back. We got to the dock and I looked at the ramp down to the pontoon and there was no way I was going to try and get down it in my chair. I had visions of me not being able to stop and going flying off the other end of the pontoon!
John and Mandy helped me down the ramp, and we got changed ready for our swim. It was 9.9° – positively tropical in comparison to the 6° in the river earlier in the week! The course was a 250m triangle loop. John got some lovely photos of Mandy and I before we got in, and the best bit was we had ended up coordinating with duck swimming costumes!
We stuck together when swimming and, in the end, decided to do 2 loops. The first was lovely, it felt a bit strange swimming in the middle of London but it was a beautiful sunny day and it felt amazing. All of a sudden, on the 2nd loop, the wind picked up, and it was bitterly cold, and the water became choppy. I was ok as I had goggles, but poor mandy was being slapped in the face with waves.
After our swim I got the chance to talk to Chess from NOWCA about accessibility, which I always do if I get the chance.
For those interested in accessibility at the venue we took some photos. The ramp is very steep down to the pontoon and at the bottom of the ramp there is a bit of a step down (as you can see in the photo). The changing rooms and shop area are up a wooden flight of stairs but I ended up just sitting on the stairs when getting changed. The actual entry is a step ladder like you would get in a swimming pool or sliding off the edge (the same when getting out). The staff there were helpful, as were all the other swimmers.
After our swim there was only one thing to could do – find cake!
We headed to a lovely little café not too far away and had lunch. Unfortunately in the café the counter/till was so high that the staff didn’t even see/serve me until the people behind me realised what was going on! After lunch we headed for the cable car. Being honest, I wasn’t sure if I would enjoy it because I had seen it occasionally stop randomly when we were swimming. Despite that, I was big and brave and got on the cable car and because of using my chair we got the carriage to ourselves. The views were incredible, although it was a little weird going over the top of where I was swimming an hour ago!
After our cable car ride, we headed to the bus stop as we were going to try and get to Charlton Lido. It seemed like an interesting part of London, sculptures of naked women with no heads, big starry entries to places, and then randomly, a bus station. Thankfully, we didn’t have to wait too long for a bus and it wasn’t too busy either.
It took about 20 minutes to get to Charlton and then it was a 10-minute walk. We found the lido, and it was only when we arrived that I remembered it was where I did my STA Open Water Swimming Coach qualification a few years ago. Despite it only being 4 years ago, it made me realise that I was a totally different person back then!
We got changed and had a short 15 minutes of swimming before we had to get out so we wouldn’t miss our train home. When I was swimming it made me think of Peterborough Lido and decided, like at Peterborough, I would happily have spent all day swimming up and down there!
We were all smiles after our second swim of the day, me especially because with the 2 swims that day it meant I had covered 16km during the week – my biggest distance in one week since October!
Sadly, our journey home was horrific and ended up with me being angrier than I have been in a long time, but for today and for this blog, I’m celebrating an awesome, double swim day, with a fabulous friend 🥰