The "Bassin
de la Villette" was created during the Napoleon years with the idea of offering drinking water to the Parisians and to supply water to "Canal Saint Martin" for example.
Originally it was surrounded by green space, a few decades later industry took over …
and other drinking water resources were fortunately made available. (You can
read more about the Bassin de la Villette and the Canal Saint Martin in some of
my previous posts, e.g. here, here, here and here.)
The water
in the Bassin is now again clean enough for bathing and swimming. It will
probably be open for public bathing in 2017, but in the meantime the French
Swimming Federation has this summer organised some races. Three races took
place last Sunday, the longest being 5 km (3.1 miles).
The Seine
River is not yet open for bathing, but continued water quality improvement is
going on and, if Paris gets the 2024 Olympics, some competitions will take
place in the river.
Thus last Sunday
I watched the 3 km (1.9 miles) morning race, which meant making three
tours around the red buoys in a 25°C water (77°F).
Security
and organisation staff took their places…
… the
swimmers were getting ready...
… and
jumped into the water, heading for the starting line.
The ladies started
a few minutes later.
A few views
of the swimmers, almost all crawling.
Everybody did
not participate in the race - nor did I. :-).
Posts
2 comments:
love the pictured
So you didn't take a leap in then peter?
Rosie
Wonderful news and a great message of hope!
Happy to see that those waters are back to the way Mother Nature intended...to see some beautiful swimming and those powerful shoulders!
The (ubiquitous) Zodiac brings heavenly memories: of supervising regattas in my birth country in all kinds of weather. Sailing can be very romantic too sometimes: once a year our club had a regatta when there was only the bright light of a full moon...
Thank you so much for this fantastic post.
Maria
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