Being sensible

Today, I just had to make getting underwater shots at The Tooting Bec Lido my blog assignment!

You know by now how passionate I am about my daily splishs :) Early in October when the SLSC (South London Swimming Club) members were allowed to take pictures again, I was straight in there with my new toy - A mask with incorporated camera - I got so carried away that I stayed in the pool without really swimming for far too long. This resulted in a spell of bronchitis - not too pleasant but to be fair with the help of acupuncture and inhalation and (sadly) abstinence (from swimming!) I shook it off pretty quickly.

Now that my fitness level and endurance for swimming in cold water is back up, I have been itching to take a camera back in the water.

The leaves from the trees that surround the Lido are falling. To every member's delight most of them land in the 100yards long water hole!

The lifeguards look at that in a different way ...

I always want to see more and more leaves in the pool - it is so amazing swimming and seeing them suspended on the water surface ...

"You lot are far too romantic. The leaves are bad for the pool! We have to clear them constantly. If we were to leave them the water quality would deteriorate rapidly!"

OK, fair point ... I guess :)

Pushing off the edge of the pool was magic though - That was yesterday ... when I noticed that the camera battery was flashing red ... ! I had to content myself with simply experiencing the feeling of loads of dead leaves brushing against my tingling body. Sometimes my fingers would hit a leaf and bring it down to the bottom of the pool where the leaf would join many more...

I saw pictures all along ... sadly, no camera to assist me in my description...

Toady, was going be different! I set off armed with my fully charged Canon IXUS 70 camera and wetsuit in my bag. I wasn't going to miss out and by being more sensible I wasn't get cold while taking shots!

Shock horror, the first thing I noticed when getting to the pool is that there were hardly any leaves today ... these lifeguards meant business yesterday ... they got rid of what, at first sight, seemed all the leaves ...

Quite disappointed I walked down the side of the pool towards my cubical counting leaves :)

Before deciding whether I should put my wetsuit on (I don't really like swimming in it) I sent my scout Sue ahead to report back on the leaf count!

"Yes, plenty of leaves."

I breathed a sigh of relief! On with the wetsuit! Quite a few people swimming - I was in for a photographic treat!

I swam along side them, behind them, even underneath them to get some shots.

I was struggling to keep up with them. Holding my breath for long enough was quite tricky too. Specially as the wetsuit being quite buoyant kept pushing me back up. Nevertheless, I got some interesting shots! Apparently my underwater struggle looked ballet like :) I can't quite see how but, hey, I'm glad it kept the swimmers amused and motivated enough to get to their goal of swimming a mile! That's 18 lengths of the pool in 11 degree Celsius! Mind you they looked a bit weary by the end of it when we caught up in the sauna...