Downstream

following year he got as far
as Westminster Bridge where
he ‘seemed to become weak’
and left the water after
completing fourteen miles in
just over four hours. But he
was back in the river again a
few weeks later, this time
covering twenty miles from
London Bridge to Purfleet,
and in 1890 he’d swum
twenty miles from Blackwall
to Gravesend. Now he’d
turned his sights on Oxford