River facts and New Year challenge?

How about swimming the length of the Tyne from your local pool?

The Swimfit website we recently came across allows you to set yourself that very challenge!

Which prompted a rummage around in the office for some Tyne River facts, in case anybody wanted a New Year challenge!

  • The tidal part of the Tyne, the Estuary, is 32km.  So, for example, if you swim in the pool at Hexham (which is 25m lengths) you could do 25 lengths every week for the year and you would achieve that goal!  Brilliant!
  • How about a team of you adding up your joint distances?  There is actually very little difference in taking on a challenge to (virtually!) swim to the source of the South Tyne or to the source of the North Tyne.  The South Tyne source to sea is 120.7km (so as a team you’d need to do nearly 93 lengths a week) and the North Tyne source to sea is 124.9km (or just over 96 lengths a week).
  • But the biggest distance of all would be the equivalent of swimming from the source of the Rede to sea – 131.5km – which means over 101 lengths a week!
  • Don’t even think about the boundary around the whole watershed, 390km; or the total length of all the rivers and streams in the Tyne, 4,408km!

Anyone setting themselves a Tyne swimming challenge, get in touch, we’d like to hear from you!