24 hour Swim Relay coming to Bedford
It's one of six open-water venues participating
Swimmers are being invited to take part in an open-water swimming challenge coming to Bedford in June.
Level Water, a national charity, who provide one-to-one swimming lessons for children with disabilities, are holding 6 open-water relay's this year, in June and September.
The event, which sees teams of up to eight people taking part in the relay, swimming one hour each on rotation, for 24 hours, is coming to Box End Park on June 22nd/23rd.
The other events this year are taking place in London, Bristol, Chelmsford, Cotswolds and Worcester.
A unique element to the challenge is that the timing's are irrelevant, and Level Water are encouraging swimmers of all abilities to participate.
Mark Fox, Head of Community Events at Level Water, said: "It's not timed. You're not in a race. There's no pressure at this event. You basically just come along with your team and swim and all the only challenges to make sure somebody's continuously is in the lake at any time, swimming around and it's beautiful and you get to see it swim at sunset, you see the sunrise.
"Get to swim under the stars because it's definitely going to be sunny at every single one of our events this year."
Swimming is a hobby, sport and leisure activity that many of us take for granted, but Mark and the team at Level Water are keen to instil the reminder that not everyone has that luxury.
"A lot of the time, I think it's so easy to forget that at any point, within 10 minutes, I could probably be in some kind of water swimming.
"If I felt like I wanted to, you know, I can go swimming in a pool, I can go on a lake, I can go on a river, but for children with disabilities, they can't access lessons that gives them the much needed skills to allow them to feel safe in water and to go swimming.
"We talk a lot about learning to swim, but it's so much bigger than that. You talk about the the life skills that they do at the confidence and the self esteem boosts they get from swimming. That doesn't necessarily mean they're ever going to learn to swim, but what it means is that they can go to the sea, they can go to a river, they can go to a pool with their family, and be in the water and around the water without the family feeling scared all the time that something terrible is going to happen."