
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.
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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.
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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.
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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'
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