Melksham woman to swim great lengths to raise money for charity

A LOCAL woman who is a wheelchair user and can only walk short distances using two walking sticks, is aiming to swim 10 kilometres throughout the month of August for a children’s charity.

Carly Lennard-Walker plans to swim the distance – the equivalent of 400 lengths of Melksham pool – to raise funds for Helen & Douglas House, a children’s charity supporting terminally ill children and their families.

She said, “I have been going swimming three times a week. Someone shared the link with me on Facebook about the challenge and I thought I’d try it. It’s going to be challenging as I have got two children and it’s summer holidays and I am in a wheelchair. I signed up for it because I thought it was a really nice thing to do.”

The swim requires Carly to complete 400 lengths in total and will be a challenge for her body. She said, “I have got abnormally deep hip socket and dysplasia in both my hips. I also have two partially slipped discs in the bottom of my back. Being able to do what I am doing is a massive thing for me. People don’t always see me after I’ve been swimming, but it knocks me out for a bit.

“It’s hard when I am swimming, I do breast stroke with my arms but with one of my legs, I do breast stroke from the knee, then the other leg I have to kick. If they start hurting too much, I have to kick with both of them or just use my arms. It makes it easier for me to use my wheelchair because it strengthens my arms. In a recent swim I hit 25 lengths, then after that for the next 10, I had to use just my arms because my hips were getting to the point where they were a bit too sore.”

Sharing her love of swimming, she said, “I always used to love swimming, I went with school every week. I never did as much as what I am doing now. I haven’t properly swum for years. The most lengths I have swam before is about 108 lengths one week when the children were at school. I managed to do 36 lengths in 26 minutes. I should be able to hit the 10k target and if I do, I am going to do another one in either October or November which is a 20k swim. In March I am going to try and do a 25-kilometre swim or 30 kilometres for Julia’s House, because my friend has a set of twins with cerebral palsy.”

Carly will be swimming at Melksham Community Campus and a swimming pool in Essex, where her mother lives.

She aims to raise £180 and after every swim in August, she will post a picture of her watch sharing the distance, on her fundraising page.