Thames Charity Swim

My missus reckons the David Walliams swim is going to be a real eye-opener. We should be ready to jump on the publicity when he finds himself nose-to-nose with a turd or a jellyfish down below Richmond. I think I'm going to sponsor him, if he makes it out alive and well at the end he'll certainly have earned it!

sort out the time he's in richmond/ hammersmith, make up a banner exclaiming 32 billion litres of sewage are put in where he's swimming
and I'll get my boat out to shadow him

wot say ye folks

A very similar thought arrived in my sleep last night, he is forced to swim ashore by the thick mire of muck and encounters big TAC and SEWAGE banners, an in-depth TV interview begins...

The swim will begin at Lechlade, 8am on September 5th.
It's going to take 8 days, I'd say he'd time himself to swim down the semi and full tidal on an ebb tide on the next to last or last day, so that would put him at Teddington/Richmond probably Sunday 11th or Monday 12th.
High tides at Richmond lock (adjusted for BST) are :
Saturday 10th 14:33
Sunday 11th 15:18
Monday 12th 15:55

Sunday 11th - Wednesday 14th I am away due to a work commitment, that is just typical.

Updates on the David Walliams Thames swimathon :

Up-to-date news with links to a BBC breakfast TV interview:
http://davidwalliamsnewsnewspage.wordpress.com/

Progress tracker: http://sportrelief.com/walliams

Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23thamesswim

Local news: http://www.elmbridgeguardian.co.uk/news/9231923.Walliams_taking_on_Thames_for_Sport_Relief/

End of day 2 - he's made it to Abingdon;
20 miles covered today, 38 miles total, raised £154,353

You can follow walliams swim on Twitter for up to date posts of where he is... Would be great to see him beside a great big banner and wish I could help but away on hols this Friday...

regarding banner, we've got our flag, and our other banner, but wot about having the amount of sewage on a banner as well, something like each individual number on a piece of laminated A4, and strung out on a line stretched from bow to stern

if you're serious folks, I'm gonna need some help, I can take time of work, supply the boat and get some of the kit together, but not all of it

and if you're good with a camera, need I say more

Day 3, he has woken up with Thames Tummy, not in a good way at all, and he's not anywhere near the really filthy section yet! Latest tweet is "dioralyte stop". Will he make it?
Raised £216,527 so far.

There's a schedule up now, I reckon we have good opportunities to make a noise on both Saturday and Sunday:

• Thurs 8th Sep sees David swim from Goring to Henley (via Whitchurch, Caversham and Reading.)
  
• Fri 9th Sep sees David swim from Henley to Windsor (via Bisham, Marlow, and Maidenhead.)
  
• Sat 10th Sep sees David swim from Windsor to Teddington (via Staines, Chertsey and Kingston.)
  
• Sun 11th Sep sees David swim from Teddington to Putney (via Kew.)
  
• Mon 12th Sep sees David swim from Putney to Westminster for the final leg of his epic journey.
  

I can print some A4 numbers if you can laminate them. Alternatively, banners on union marches are often constructed using black paint on an old white sheet. A charity shop should have the sheets, I might have some old paint in the garage. Actually I've got some old sheets in the garage, not white but light coloured, good enough. And plenty of garden canes to hold it up. What do we want it to say?

X Million tonnes of sewage
Poisoning our River Thames every year
Stop It NOW!

That's quite a lot of letters, too long.

Latest news, David walliams Has become Seriously sick with "Thames Tummy" on charity swim!!

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/showbiz/news/a339259/david-walliams-gets-stomach-bug-from-sport-relief-thames-swim.html

nice one chaps
was thinking along the lines of 32,000,000,000,000 litres of
sewage enter the thames a year

each number/letter printed both sides of A4, would be good to have black letters on our blue background, then we can string'em, washing line style from bow to stern
we have banners we can put each side of the boat , plus our flag, and most importantly the brew kit

End of day 4: Despite the sickness he's reached Reading, 9 miles covered today, 62 miles total. Raised £364,984.

39 000 000 000 LITRES OF SEWAGE ARE DUMPED IN THE THAMES EACH YEAR

900 point font, one letter per sheet, light blue background.
We have to manually black felt pen commas between the groups of 0's, I just couldn't get it to fit them in properly.

Need an even number of characters to do that and its 53 letters so (back to back) there'd be a blank at one end, shall I put a skull and crossbones, a turd, a Thames Water logo, a TAC logo or an exclamation mark at the end?
(I don't have a big "portrait" oriented TAC logo, can someone point me at the artwork?) Update: I've put a skull & crossbones on for now.

Print out 2 copies and glue/laminate the sheets back to back. Will use a lot of laminates, would gluing on to cardboard actyually be sufficient? Anyone got that much cardboard?

Preview here: http://www.cassilis.plus.com/TAC/banner_thames_sewage.pdf

I re-posted the TAC's Facebook link to the Metro story about Walliams' tummy bug, and as a result might have got some press interest. Anyhow, it got me thinking about how a newspaper might tackle the subject and I've posted this on another totally unrelated forum which I frequent:

Poor David Walliams - he seems to have taken on more than he can chew (or at least safely swallow ) by swimming the Thames: http://sportrelief.com/walliams

He's already got "Thames Tummy" & he's not even at Henley - http://www.metro.co.uk/showbiz/874844-d ... arity-swim

He's still miles upstream of the tidal stretch where earlier this week some 500,000 cubic metres of untreated sewage were discharged resulting in water quality plunging below the levels reached on the 6th of June when a similarly sized "plug" of shite brought about a massive fish & invertebrate kill. See the video a third the way down here: http://rivertac.org/site/

Not that many people seem to care that some 32,000,000,000,000 litres of sewage are still being discharged into the Thames each year. It makes a mockery of the recent award for being one of Europe's most improved rivers (note the comments below the press puff): http://www.flickr.com/photos/environmen ... 439568422/

One body that does care, an organisation of which I'm a member, is the Thames Anglers Conservators. They're pushing for press coverage on the back of Walliams' efforts, not least to help stop the prevarication and actually have the proposed Thames Tunnel built as soon as possible:

http://www.thameswater.co.uk/cps/rde/xc ... /10115.htm


Hopefully common decency will prevail and the works necessary to bring London's sewage system out of the Victorian age will soon be approved, without significant further harm to fish & TV comedians.

Top work Paul. Got your PM, David Harvey's just called me and he's on the case. I was thinking of contacting the Richmond & Twickenham Times too, let them know there may be some interesting stunts happening at Teddington or Richmond when Walliams comes through.

I've just printed out 2 sets of the letters from above to make the banner.

If we can laminate them, then punch 4 holes top and bottom they should remain stable when strung them along some old 30lb line between a mast at the front and rear of the TAC protest ship. 2 sets of lines, top and bottom, should ensure they don't just flutter horizontally in the wind. Jim I hope I can get time to get together with you Saturday to sort this, I'm going to miss the action unfortunately as I have to be away from Sunday until Wednesday night :-(

We should have a separate thread for this Walliams stuff, my fault as I rather hi-jacked the EA most improved rivers one. Admin is it possible to move selected posts across to a new one?

nice one chaps
A4 is pukka, no probs with laminating, have method of stringing line, so all looks on course

anyone up for being a shipmate

Disappointing if this is all that results from the various discussions - only passing mention of raw sewage: "(A spokeswoman for Thames Water)...said it was only once the river reached London that there was any risk of raw sewage being washed into the Thames from storm overflows"

Hopefully this article was written before the discussions:


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/david-walliams-suffering-with-thames-tummy-prompts-donation-surge-2351557.html

End of Day 5, he's made it to Marlow, 78 miles total, and raised over £500,000 now.
His totaliser says that's +9 miles on but measuring on map24 says it's 30km on from Caversham, which is more like 18 miles.

My guesstimate is tomorrow (Saturday) he will reach Windsor and possibly even Staines.
That will put him swimming through our swims all day Sunday.
Crab's Island early Sunday morning, Walton around lunchtime, Kingston in the evening and finishing up at Teddington Lock around 7pm on Sunday.

On Monday he can swim down the semi-tidal until the sluices open at Richmond approx. 3pm, then he has to stop until 4pm when the tide turns. If he gets to Richmond before 3pm (very likely), he has to stop there and wait.
So we have him stuck at Richmond Lock until 4pm Monday. A good place for a demo?
Once he gets back in on the ebb tide he will go shooting off downstream faster than a Thames Jellyfish.

until he reaches Hammersmith, where he will have to do some serious zigzagging to avoid the richards

Yes, I hope he switches to backstroke after Richmond, for his own health! How could anyone do front crawl face down in that?!

After Richmond he'll just be going through the motions.

In the Independent today:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/walliams-next-obstacle-in-thames-swim-raw-sewage-2352209.html

nice one dave, the TAC in a daily newspaper, pukka

ok folks, lets get this sorted, we know where he's gonna be, and at what time, so what we gonna do
is a bankside stunt a good idea, maybe forewarning him of whats to come

regarding accompanying him in the boat, the boat will be decked out with our 3m flag, flying high, our 2m banners either side, pollution figures on a line from bow to stern and a flashing led message screen
but I need a shipmate or two, otherwise it wont be safe
put simply, this aint gonna happen without shipmates

Quote :

39 000 000 000 LITRES OF SEWAGE ARE DUMPED IN THE THAMES EACH YEAR

I spread the letters out on the living room floor last night, they won't all fit! The overall length of that is over 11metres. How big is your boat Jim?
We might need to shorten it a bit.

EdRandall wrote:

Quote :

39 000 000 000 LITRES OF SEWAGE ARE DUMPED IN THE THAMES EACH YEAR

IO spread the letters out on the living room floor last night, tghey won't all fit! The overall length of that is over 11metres. How big is your boat Jim?
We might need to shorten it a bit.

Remove 3 zeros & alter LITRES to TONNES....................