Darrin Roles started and runs, with acknowledged support from many friends and family, the Lock-to-Lock events in the River Thames upstream of Oxford. These swims are variously from Eynsham to King’s Lock (4 kilometers), from Farmoor to King’s Lock (6 kilometers) and from Farmoor to Godstow Lock (10 kilometers). In the course of setting up these swims, he revived the Oxford Mile (renamed the Oxford Classic Mile) and set up two swim-runs, along the same stretch of the River Thames as the Lock-to-Lock swims.
The Lock-to-Lock events are now regular features in the swim calendar, and they show-case the River Thames as it flows through Eynsham and towards Oxford, this little corner of paradise. Darrin’s paradise – a man who sees the beauty of the local, of the thing before him, rather than chasing a far-off butterfly. And the local, the Thames at Eynsham, is astonishingly beautiful, growing more so the more you look at it. In this podcast, we discuss Darrin’s swimming life history so far – he is in his fifties and has much swimming him yet. We discuss the Lock-to-Lock events, their origins and their  development, and his plans for future swimming events in the River Thames in Oxfordshire.