Well, we are trying it ourselves with the dwindling but brave fight at Kickstarter for Light of The White Bear, which today found support from Roger Garland himself, Tolkien’s illustrator, in a new fellowship that includes writers, artists, readers, ecologists, poets, photographers, a fine young DJ, Clare Bell and DCD. But we have just 3 days to achieving a miracle, that you can see and help by CLICKING HERE AND PRESSING BACK THIS PROJECT.
But meanwhile just a little time out for other heroic “Swim starter” efforts too! Knowledge of one in question came out of an article here on the fascinating Garden Museum in the old Church right by Lambeth Palace, where Elias Ashmole, The Tradescants and Captain Bligh are all buried. Thankfully we live in an inclusive world, as opposed to those difficult Reformation days, testified to by an ominous plaque on the Church wall making an education grant but excluding chimney sweeps, Watermen and Catholiks! But so to the other campaign in question, and you will forgive the linkage, but that Museum was and is a testament to what local individuals can achieve.
“Tredeskin’s Rarities are come downe from London by water”
125 Miles, 8 hours a day for 12 days, 70,000 calories and 180,000 strokes of crawl…
In August 2014 the Garden Museum’s Director, Christopher Woodward, will swim the length of the River Thames from Oxford to London in an epic journey that mirrors the Tradescant Collection’s journey when it left Lambeth for Oxford over 350 years ago. If successful, Christopher will become only the fourth person to swim this distance.
The magnificent effort is to herald a grant of 3.4 Million from The Heritage Lottery Fund and add to it, for further work on the Museum, which will also include bringing back some of a Cabinet of Curiosities to Lambeth, once in that very first 17th Century museum “The Ark”. Which some say were really pinched by Alias Ashmole, to become the basis of the famous Ashmolean in Oxford. A worthy cause indeed and though the Thames was probably far cleaner in Shakespeare’s day than it became in Dicken’s or Bill Syke’s time, if not as clean as it is now, we would have been impressed by swimming across the river at Old London Bridge, or indeed Lambeth, that old Horse Ferry, let alone 125 miles from Oxford to London! Strength to your elbows.
To see the project go to http://gardenmuseum.org.uk/page/tradescants-treasures-thames-swim-2014 and to support it go to http://www.justgiving.com/ChristopherWoodward
or http://www.justgiving.com/gardenmuseum
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