Swim Serpentine

Swim Serpentine is a swimming event held on a Saturday in mid-September in Hyde Park in London. A lap of the Serpentine Lake is one mile, and several different distances are offered. The event involves around 5000 swimmers of which about 500 are charity places and perhaps another 150 have their own place but choose to fundraise. In 2025 Whisper has the largest allocation of charity places (48) at this event, with a further two own-place fundraisers. It’s a pleasant, festival-like event and the weather can be fairly warm and sunny. The 2 mile places are oversubscribed because they (and the 6 mile places) count towards the London Classics medal. With careful marketing and by using an advertising package from the event organisers, we can fill 2 mile places, and smaller numbers of half mile and 1 mile places. The 6 mile places are relatively expensive and hard to fill, so we no longer offer them.

How places are sold

The organisers LME Ltd allow people to buy their own places in around February and after that the only option for swimmers is to find a charity place. People who want to buy their own place should go to the event website and sign up to their email list to register their interest in November to December. If the system works like it did in 2024-25, signing up to that email list will give them “priority access” to a place in January-February. In early January that email list is closed to new applications and after that the only option to buy an own place is to watch for announcements on social media a few days before the places are made available in early February on the event website, where they sell out very quickly, particularly the 2 mile places.

Rolling places to the following year

If somebody is injured or their plans change, so that they drop out, then provided we know in good time before the registration console closes (around a month before the event), Whisper can offer their place to somebody else and offer them a place in the following year’s event, crediting them for the fundraising they have already done. If the person drops out after the registration console closes and they have gone beyond their fundraising target then we can credit the excess above their fundraising target for an entry in the following year’s event.

On the day

The postcode for Hyde Park is W2 2UH.

The festival area (51.506472N, -0.168743W) is on the north side of the Serpentine across the road from the Serpentine North Gallery.

Event history

2023

The event was very profitable; we had 19 places, mostly rolled forward from several years back, and we grossed around £7K, although the places would have been hard to market without LME Ltd’s advertising package, which we paid for.

We had a (free) charity gazebo, and for a 4 hour period we offered free sports massage to anybody who wanted it. Charity gazebos are assigned by lot and in 2023 there were only 6 of them, so in future years we might not get a stall. We were offered the chance to set up the stall the previous day, but this was not necessary, indeed on the previous day the site was considered a construction site and everybody was required to wear a high viz jacket and steel-toecapped safety boots. On the day, some charities without stalls arrived early (7:30am) and pitched an advertising pennant at one of the picnic tables or under a tree next to the charity stalls, anchored by a water-filled pedestal. Others had volunteers walking around with pennants anchored in their backpacks. A large cafe-style Whisper umbrella, to provide protection from the sun and the rain, might be an attractive alternative, lashed to one of the picnic tables that the organisers set up in the festival area (2024 update: I’m not sure that they would allow this nowadays).

For two swimmers who opted out at the last minute because of a high blue-green algae count, and who instead swam the distance in a swimming pool, we ordered medals from Trophies Plus Medals.

2024

The swimmers raised about £8500 although this year was expensive, with fees for advertising and places totalling £5K. There was an initial rush for places but demand for charity places in the weeks leading up to the event was quite low. 2 mile places were very popular (we paid for 30), one mile less so and half mile much less so. We didn’t manage to fill our 6 mile place. There were only about 550 charity swimmers in the whole event, out of about 5000 swimmers in total, so one in 20 charity swimmers were swimming with Whisper.

This year we had 3 swimmers who swam but did no fundraising at all, which is new to me. Next year we’ll need to set an intermediate fundraising target that at least covers the cost of the place, with a deadline of 6 weeks before the event so the swimmer can be replaced if they don’t meet it. This also provides some protection against the inevitable last minute dropouts for injury, of which we had a couple.

I arrived about 07:45 and left at 16:30. There was only one charity gazebo and we didn’t get it; it went to the dolphin and whale charity, who are very nice by the way. I initially set up a table and a roller banner in the festival area but I was asked to move to the (new) “charity cheer area” between the Diana Fountain and the lake, just off the south side of the bridge at 51.50517N, 0.17140W. I was still able to meet a lot of the swimmers there, so it was worthwhile being there.

2025

Recommendations:

• Suggest use of latitude and longitude to find locations in the park.
• Think about how to retain interest for swimmers who want to stay in touch.