By: Blonde Two

Here’s an interesting thing: It takes me (and most people) fifteen minutes to walk a kilometre, but it takes me thirty minutes to swim one (not in the pool above). I know that the walk takes this long because Mr Naismith (look up his rule) told me that it does. I know that the swim takes this long because I have been timing myself. All of these rules and timings mean that I walk twice as fast as I swim.

I wish it was the other way round. As a girl I wasn’t sporty, the only sport I ever imagined I might be good at was synchronised swimming. Watching the Russians in Rio this year, has helped me to finally put that one to bed! It took me a long time to learn to swim a width, but once I had, I was hooked and swam four lengths the same day.

I have discovered that swimming is something of a miracle cure. I have arthritis in my knees. Arthritis and hill-walking are not comfortable bed-fellows. I sometimes get home after a day in the hills, and have to crawl up the stairs. However, if I swim forty lengths several times a week, my knees behave better; I can run up stairs, rise from a crouch and ignore my walking poles. Not only that, I think I have firmer buttocks!