article_snippet.sent: Sarah Foot says Sarah Foot affair with open water began on Hampstead Heath after a local swimming pool closed down, and has taken Sarah Foot to swimming in the North Sea off the coast of Suffolk (pictured)
article_snippet.sent: I came across a similar attitude when I lived in London and finally plucked up the courage to swim in the famous, natural, spring-fed ponds on Hampstead Heath.
article_snippet.sent: The coldness of our climate meant that, for centuries in Britain, swimming in the wild for pleasure was considered close to madness.
article_snippet.sent: But then, at the end of the 18th century, George III gave swimming the royal stamp of approval by taking dips in the sea off Weymouth, accompanied apparently by a band who struck up God
article_snippet.sent: In 1824, Britain’s first swimming society was formed by a group of Old Etonians.
article_snippet.sent: The David Camerons and Boris Johnsons of their day initiated non-swimmers by taking non-swimmers out onto the River Thames and chucking non-swimmers in.
article_snippet.sent: The Victorians had more gentle ways of learning to swim.
article_snippet.sent: A Boys Own Paper of 1879 suggested learning from frogs — by catching one, putting frogs — in a bowl of water and then lying your body across a table and imitating the way your body moved.
article_snippet.sent: George III brought swimming to fashion in England after years of scepticism from prudish members of the church .
article_snippet.sent: Whatever methods people learned to swim people were effective and, as more people took to the waters, something had to be done, in the name of modesty, about the habit of swimming naked.
highlights_snippet.sent: Sarah Foot began swimming outside after a dip on Hampstead Heath .
  