WHY WE NEED A NATIONAL ORGANISATION
TO REPRESENT OPEN WATER SWIMMERS
Open water swimming in the UK - a very popular leisure activity in the 1920s and 30s - has lost its mass appeal following the expansion of affordable travel abroad. Despite some recent signs of a revival, the number of people engaged in open water swimming in some parts of the country is now only a fraction of what it used to be in its heydays.
Swimming in rivers and lakes has been particularly badly affected by the advent of Health and Safety (H&S) regulations and the growth of the 'Blame and Claim' culture in the last twenty years or so. Public ignorance of the law and the health and safety regulations has, in some cases, been exploited by commercial and other interest groups (e.g. land owners, local residents, fishermen and power hungry local officials.) to restrict public access to waters which have been used for bathing and swimming for generations. By contrast, other groups engaged in potentially dangerous sporting activities (mountaineering, rock climbing, caving, canoeing) have hardly been affected by the H&S culture. They have certainly not been subjected to the intensity of hostile activities experienced by lake and river swimmers. It is interesting to note that the Royal Society for the prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) singles out swimming in inland open water as an activity which must be simply stopped. A major contributing factor to this sad state of affairs is that, unlike other outdoor sports groups, there was no organisation which safeguards the interests of open water swimmers at a national level. Pressure from commercial quarters often benefits the interests of sea bathers, however, river and lake swimmers do not generally enjoy such support.

Our objectives
  • Increase public awareness to the fact that swimming in open water is a natural, healthy and ecologically friendly sport.
  • Improve swimming safety standards through information, education and vigilance and expose the consequences of the negative attitude adopted by some organisation towards bathing in rivers and lakes.
  • Protect the interests of those who seek to enjoy beach and water activities whenever they come under threat and seek to remedy situations where their rights have been or are being violated.
  • Encourage authorities to meet the growing demand for inland beaches by re-establishing, creating and maintaining sites near centres of population.
  • Restore respectability to open water bathing.
  • Seek co-operation with organisations who share common interest.
Member clubs
The association is made up of nine open water swimming clubs: And over six hundred individual members

Join us
Whether you are an individual swimmer or represent a club you will be welcome to join us.
Membership is free. We make no demand and do not bombard you with information. Join
Please don't wait until your favourite pond is under threat of being closed down. Help us to protect the interests of open water swimmers.

Who is Who at RALSA

Jean Perraton, President

Jean Perraton is the author of Swimming Against the Stream. With a degree in geography and a diploma in town planning, she has worked as a planner and an environmental consultant. Now she has time for making sculptures, playing the piano and table tennis, growing organic vegetables, and trying to learn modern Greek. She chairs the Cam Valley Forum, which seeks to improve the environment of the river Cam, and is a member of the Newnham Riverbank Club. She believes that, in our affluent and polluting society, we need to regain a delight in simple pleasures, such as swimming in natural waters, pleasures that re-unite us with the earth that sustains us.

Rob Fryer, Chairman

Rob learned to swim in the River Cherwell while at school in Oxford. He later moved to west Wiltshire where he raised his five children to enjoy the pleasures of river swimming. He is chair of the Farleigh & District Swimming Club, on the River Frome near Trowbridge, and has been compiling “Rob’s Directory of Cool Places(*)” for the past 10 years. His knowledge of watering holes, especially in the UK and France, and of wild swimming safety, is extensive. Together with Yacov Lev he founded RALSA in 2003. Rob also ran a successful colour printers in Warminster for 43 years.
(*)Cool Places is Currently only available occasionally and in draft form.

Yacov Lev, Secretary

Born in Tel-Aviv Yacov’s childhood centred on the sea where he became a proficient swimmer at a very early age. After a career in the Israeli Merchant Navy he came to Liverpool, his wife’s home town, to study and ended up as a R&D engineer with Shell. In 2000, Yacov became involved in a campaign to keep Hatchmere Lake, his favourite swimming place, open to the public. This led him later to becoming a co- founder of RALSA. As well as swimming, Yacov enjoys cycling, hill walking, photography and playing music.

Daniel Start, Consultant

Daniel Start is natural resources planner with a background in economics and agriculture, particularly overseas. He has worked for various think tanks over the last fifteen years and advises the government and NGOs on rural and community development issues. In his spare time he helps to document and photograph the wild swimming sites of Britain and in April 2008 he published a photo-guidebook to these places called
'Wild Swimming: 150 hidden dips in the rivers, lakes and waterfalls of Britain'
Regional representatives:
David Gallico, based in Rugby
Ross Clement, based in Leicester
Volunteer researchers:
Pete Roberts, James Robinson and many others who provide us with interesting information.