Welcome to Adventurous Swimmer. For those who decide to leave the comforts of the pool for the fresh waters of lakes, the chills of winter sea swims or the relaxing swims down gentle rivers.
| Take part in our Winter Challenge 2024-25 | Safe Cold Water Swimming Guide |
We are Ben and Beth and formed by our love of swimming, we formed Adventurous Swimmer as a fun project for us. While we both love swimming, Beth has been the inspiration behind the idea. Taking on many open water based swimming challenges for both charity and personal targets, Beth’s challenges began in 2018, deciding to swim 1 mile in Lake Bala, Snowdonia in a wetsuit for Pancreatic Cancer UK in memory of her Granny Jan.
Following this swim, Beth decided to ditch the wetsuit and continue her open water swimming journey in “skins”. We met in 2019 through the triathlon community and swam together as the temperature’s dropped through winter and Beth trained for her Ice Mile (swimming for 1 mile in only a swim costume in water temperature’s below 5 deg). An extremely tough swim which takes a lot of physical and mental focus, Beth completed this successfully in a time of 38 minutes, 52 seconds before setting her sights on the English Channel. With many charity lake swims completed in the build up, together we have swam all over the UK in preparation for the momentous swim. Beth has also swum the lengths of some of the lakes which have inspired our Winter Challenge – Coniston, Ullswater and Windermere.
Beth successfully completed her English Channel Solo in 2022 in a time of 14 hours, 43 minutes. She has been an inspiration for many open water swimmers we have met along the way, those amazed by her grit and determination to swim in waters just above freezing temperature yet do so in a safe and controlled manner as well as her support of others willing to try such a challenge.
To top it all off, in 2024 Beth also became one of the few women who have completed a North Channel Relay while still breastfeeding post partum following the birth of our son.
Many swimmer complete these challenges, many swim in beautiful picturesque places across the country, many set themselves targets and even more so enjoy being part of such a community.
With a combination of Beth’s determination and Ben’s creativity we have launched Adventurous Swimmer to celebrate the places which people swim, the challenges they complete, the people we have met and the support from the open water swimming community as well as a place to introduce people to it.
