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I have already said that that we would revisit Hathersage and so we did. You may remember if you have read the earlier parts of this diary that we attempted to swim this pool at the end of July when we made our trip up north to swim in Cumbria, Scotland, Northumberland and Yorkshire. On that day, we arrived at Hathersage in early afternoon after a difficult journey across the Derbyshire Peak District from Nantwich. There was a queue of people outside waiting to get in and it transpired that the pool was full and they were only allowing the first in the queue to enter when someone left. We were on a tight schedule and after chatting with the friendly people in the queue, knocked the door. Eventually Angie Plank the pool manager appeared. We explained our quest to swim a mile in every lido in the UK for Save the Children Fund and could we possibly come in to complete our mile, please? The answer from Angie was a flat NO! Dave said that we had driven 300 miles especially to swim in her pool, still NO! I offered to swim gentle head-up breaststroke, still NO! This lady was not for moving and we had to accept that if we wanted to complete our task, we would have to come back another day. If we had waited we would have missed swimming Ilkley and Ingleton later that afternoon.

Undaunted, I telephoned the pool the following week. A friendly pool attendant answered and told me that they had a small accident and the pool had been emptied. Someone had left a valve open over night and that water had simply drained away. He was confident that the pool would be full and in use by the following weekend.

As I was away managing a channel relay team during the week before our second attempt to swim this pool, Dave rang Angie again to check that we could swim and she confirmed that it would be possible but it had to be 8.30am in the morning when a lane was in. We were both up for this and Dave and Sally arranged local B&B accommodation after visiting Dave’s daughter in Sheffield. Diana and I were coming from Wolverhampton having stayed overnight with our daughter Samantha. The journey seemed to last for ever and took over 2 ½ hours against the AA estimate of under 2 hours, hence we arrived at 9am. Meanwhile, poor Dave had been pleading with the pool supervisor Lee for us to swim anyway. Dave had given an interview to Radio Derbyshire the night before and put a positive spin on the pool and as part of the negotiations suggested that he would like to put a further good word in when they interviewed him again at 8.40am.

When we arrived at 9am it was grudgingly agreed that we could after all swim our mile. The pool itself was great with a lovely grandstand and we swam our 54 lengths in good time watched by a couple of friendly lifeguards. Diana sat in the corner watching Lee who was by this time taking a swimming lesson and barking instructions at young Dominic in the process.

We wondered whether we would have been able to swim this pool if Angie hadn’t taken the day off? When Dave returned to Dorset he found a message on his answer phone from Angie saying that the pool was too busy for her to let us swim.

When I look back over the past year and the hundreds of good people we met during this wonderful challenge, I can hardly believe the reception we got at Hathersage. The lady lifeguard was really nice even chasing after us to the pool café to return Dave’s goggles, which he had left on poolside, but we will remember Angie Plank and pool supervisor Lee for all the wrong reasons. They didn’t seem to realise that not only were we raising money for a worthy cause but we were also attempting raise the profile open-air pools like theirs. We were friends, not foes.

My story of this pool emphasises the fact that our journey has been as much about the people we met than anything else. Hathersage, you couldn’t make up!