The rivers we care for: the Kennet, Pang and Wallingford Brooks are small chalk streams, without facilities to support lots of visitors, and whilst we love people to enjoy the river, there are several pinch points where visitor numbers are blighting the river. Two examples are Axford and Speen, where locals who had been enjoying a quiet dip for years have found their havens of peace inundated by hoards of visitors. Not only does this disturb the wildlife, but creates problems with litter, noise, bank erosion and trespass.
Swimming in the river is not new, a look at C19th maps of the Kennet and Pang shows ‘bathing places’ marked at several spots, not quite wild swimming, but a sign that people have been splashing about in the river for hundreds of years.
ARK does not provide advice on the safety of wild swimming and suggest that people wanting to know about the risks visit the outdoor swimming society.
We ask swimmers to note that:
- Most of the Kennet and its tributaries are Sites of Special Scientific interest because of the wildlife these chalk streams support. Swim quietly, take litter home and do not damage the river bed or banks.
- Make sure you are not trespassing. Most of the non-navigable parts of Kennet and Pang are privately owned.
- Be considerate of wildlife. Birds will be nesting in reeds for most of the summer, bankside vegetation is critical for water vole habitat and to protect the river from erosion. The river bed is where trout lay their eggs from late winter to early spring – disturbing the gravel river bed will destroy their nests. Coarse fish, which typically live in the downstream sections of river (so for the Kennet around Newbury and Reading), will be spawning through the late spring and summer. For this reason it’s ‘closed season’ for fishing from 15 March - 15 June to avoid disturbing them.
- You can check the Thames Water sewage discharge map, to see whether there have been recent recorded spills of untreated sewage at works upstream from where you want to swim.
- When we have tested our rivers for E.Coli and Total Coliforms some readings are high, with bacteria from both human and animal sources.
