Lord James Bethell and a Vision for a Swimmable Thames in London

Toby Robinson is an international swimmer, representing England at the 2022 Commonwealth Games, and Great Britain at the Paris Olympic Games 2024. He is passionate about swimming, especially in open water. He is a staunch advocate and campaigner for clean open water in the UK, especially the River Thames in London. In September 2025, he was a key participant in a Thames relay swim from the source to London, highlighting sewage pollution in UK waterways. He is an ambassador for "Friends of the Thames", which promotes the restoration and protection of the river. In late 2025 he swam in the revived historic Lords and Commons race in the Thames in London. He discusses all of these things in this podcast.

Swimmingpod celebrates its 5th birthday, with guests Helen Edwards, Tom Kearney, Anette Frisch, Charlotte Sawyer, Tess Bird, Vera Prokopieva, and Carl Tysom. 65 episodes, covering styles and cultures of swimming in the outdoors and open water. Swimming heroes and everyday swimmers, politics and ecology of open watee. Swimming in health, disease and disability. Water and poetry, prose, music, visual arts and film. Swimming events, challenges, clubs, and groups. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since the first episode in 2020.

Sian Richardson is founder of the Bluetits Chill Swimmers, a social enterprise that has gone global. In this episode of Swimmingpod, Sian talks about how she got into winter swimming events and about Bluetits in Tallinn and at Lake Bled.

James Bethell is a Lord of the British realm. A former Health Minister and member of the House of Lords. He is a passionate open water swimmer, whose passion has extended to bring open water swimming back to the River Thames in London. In this episode of Swimmingpod, Lord Bethell, James Bethell, talks about his open water passion, and a vision for a swimmable River Thames.

A warm June, 2025; a similarly warm June 2020, but in very different circumstances, both times greeting the solstice sun with a swim. Five years since the pandemic, Stanley Ulijaszekreflects in this podcast on summer solstice swimming and other rituals attached to this time of year at Oxford, both then, and now.

Daniel Allen-Hörnfeldt and Elvira Lundgren swim in Umea, Sweden. A place known for its magnificent wilderness, green and blue spaces, and swimming and winter swimmingscene. They run a very successful local winter bathing place called Umeakallbad. This is their story.

In this episode of Swimmingpod, Stanley Ulijaszek is with cake and pastry specialist Susanna Bowers, swimming at the London Fields and Brockwell Lidos , and eating cake and pastries at Pophams Bakery, Maya’s Bakehouse, and the lido cafe at Brockwell. In doing so, they explore the intimate connection between swimming and cake in London, a city of lidos and bakeries. They read from the Lido Guide, by Janet Wilkinson and Emma Pusill, and from Libby Page's novel The Lido, set in Brixton and Brockwell Lido.  There is a literarytheme too – with Tolkein and Lord of the Rings, and Lewis Carroll and Alice inWonderland.   

Swimming and cake is a natural combination for many outdoor swimmers. In this episode of Swimmingpod, food expert Susanna Bowers joins Stanley Ulijaszek in Oxford to explore both. They swim at Port Meadow from the Dodo Tree; and later from the Tolkien Bench in the University Park, close by Parsons Pleasure and what was once Dames Delight. Cake is eaten before swimming, then at St Cross College after the first swim, and at the Randolph Hotel after the second swim. Water and food in the fiction works of University of Oxford Professors Charles Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll) and J.R.R. Tolkien – Alice in Wonderland, Alice Through the Looking Glass, Lord of the Rings – come to the surface repeatedly.  

I never expected to suffer from leptospirosis, although I know that it is a risk. A comment I sometimes hear from passers-by while swimming in the river is “you know you can get Weil’s Disease, don’t you?” My internal response, never spoken, is “Yes, but…” it is so rare that it is hardly on my swimmer’s radar. In retrospect I am surprised by how it took me by surprise when I got it, even though I thought I knew what it looks like. The lived experience of a disease is always very different to what it says in the textbook, although the textbook is essential to knowing how to treat it. So, despite knowing the symptoms of leptospirosis (through reading and talking with other open water swimmers) it surprised me how quickly it took hold of me, how quickly it became distressing, and how quickly I started to lose my mind while at the same time thinking that I was holding it together. This podcast is about that experience, back in 2020.

Amelie Schlemmer swims in Vienna. She is co-founder of SVDK – Swimmverein Donaukanal – the Donaukanal (Danube Canal) Swimming Club. This was founded in 2020 by four students of the Social Design program at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, as an artistic practice. It soon turned into an open, non-profit cultural association with the ambition of revitalizing urban swimming culture along the Danube Canal. With over 300 members, the association is active along the Danube Canal as it passes through Vienna, and collaborates with various initiatives and institutions within Vienna and internationally. In this podcast we discuss the resurgence of swimming in the Danube Canal in Vienna, and the design work that SVDK have undertaken tomake this happen. Learn more at https://schwimmvereindonaukanal.org/Cover image by Sarah Tasha Hauber