On July 11^th a team of intrepid volunteers set off to attempt the Newman Trust Lakes Challenge. The aim was to raise as much money and publicity for the Trust as possible by swimming 10km (400 lengths of the average swimming pool) in the English Lake District. The team comprised Dave Davis, Hannah Willatt, Zoe Walkington, Nicola Wallace and Judith Hawke. Dave, Hannah, Zoe and Nicola all volunteer on the Horton Lodge holiday and Judith found out about the event and the Trust through Nicola and decided to give up her time to help them. Training started in January 08 with pool sessions of ever-increasing distance. Both Zoe and Nicola had never swum front crawl before, so the whole training process was a steep learning curve. To make things interesting, Judith had a knee operation weeks before the event and Dave suffered a hand injury, which meant he had to complete the event using only his legs.

On day one, the team swam the length of Buttermere, followed by a fell walk to Scale Force waterfall before descending to swim across and along Crummock Water. On the second day they walked to Easedale Tarn and swam around it, before returning to swim across Grasmere. They didn't swim Rydal Water as planned due to the time constraints of drying, changing and transferring to a new lake, but swam back across Grasmere to make sure the target distance was achieved.As expected, their main challenge was the water temperature, but instead of the expected 16-17^oC, they swam in temperatures down to 11^oC, as the Lakes had had a fresh top up of cold English rain. For comparison, the average pool comes in at about 28^oC and it feels "chilly" at 26^oC.

To raise a bit of extra cash (and the odd eyebrow), a challenge was issued to Dave to swim one of the lakes in a Borat Mankini. Never one to back down from a challenge, he agreed on the basis that the Mankini should pay for a child’s holiday. The amount required was duly raised and he swam Easedale Tarn in the garment.

The team found the Lakes Challenge exactly that; a challenge. Like all challenges it was difficult, sometimes unpleasant, but thoroughly rewarding. So far, the Lakes challenge has raised nearly £8,000 and the website is live until September 08 at www.justgiving.com/newmantrustlakes

In addition to the £8,000, a further £4,000 was kindly donated by SLR Consulting Ltd as a result of the associated publicity campaign. A big Thank You goes out to all at SLR Consulting Ltd.