Downstream

organised river racing than
those at Lechlade, the
impetus for learning to swim,
at least among university
students, was rowing, and
early rowing almanacs
suggest bathing was part of
their training. The poet
Robert Southey was said to
have ‘learned two things only
at Oxford, to row and to
swim’. But as was the case
upstream, many people died
in the much-loved rivers;