24hr Swim Relay Alderford

At five in the morning on Alderford Lake, the rising sun hits the Shropshire water like a molten disc while swimmers push through their team's dawn shift to cheers from the bank. The 24hr Swim Relay Alderford is an open water team endurance event held at Alderford Lake near Whitchurch, in Shropshire, England. Organized by the swimming charity Level Water, the continuous endurance relay joined the outdoor calendar in late September, challenging squads to keep at least one person in the lake every hour around the clock. Each swimmer takes on their allotted sixty-minute leg before handing over to a teammate at the water's edge, passing through twilight, pitch darkness, and the emerging morning glow.

Night swimming brings out an electric atmosphere along the shoreline, turning the solitary focus of long laps into a collective celebration. Swimmers describe the dark hours as genuinely magical, buoyed by teammates and strangers who stay awake wrapped in fleece on the bank to yell encouragement into the black water. The hour between five and six in the morning delivers a distinct reward, when the low sun reflects across the surface like a ball of yellow gold and the mist begins to rise off the cold lake. By the final hour on Sunday, exhaustion gives way to an exuberant carnival, with teams taking to the water together in vibrant fancy dress, clutching inflatables to complete their ultimate laps side by side.

The lit 400-metre loop and the night rules

At the 24hr Swim Relay at Alderford Lake, swimmers lap a 400-metre course marked out by buoys that stay lit up throughout the night. Water support kayaks cover the 400 m loop for the whole 24 hours of the Alderford relay. At night each Alderford swimmer carries two static lights, a white one attached to the goggles and a different colour on the tow float. At night the organisers want the lake kept as dark as possible, to give swimmers the full effect of night-time swimming. Ten minutes before each hour ends, swimmers are notified by the water safety team and by red lights on the shore.

Fenn's and Whixall Mosses: peat bogs and Bronze Age relics

Just about eight kilometres away from the relay lake lies Fenn's, Whixall and Bettisfield Mosses National Nature Reserve, an expansive lowland raised bog straddling the Shropshire border. This wilderness landscape relies entirely on rainwater for its survival, which has allowed thick blankets of spongy peat to accumulate over thousands of years to depths reaching up to 26 feet, or 7.9 metres. Walking along its edges feels like stepping into a vast, saturated sponge that has preserved prehistoric secrets under its carpet of moss. The unusual chemistry of this rain-fed bog created perfect conditions for natural mummification over the millennia. Between 1867 and 1889, peat cutters uncovered three ancient bog bodies buried deep in the layers, including an Iron Age man and an Early Bronze Age man.

While the intensely acidic, oxygen-deprived bog water completely dissolved their mineral bones, it tanned and preserved their human skin and hair in astonishing detail. Archaeological treasures have also surfaced from the mire, including a Middle Bronze-Age looped palstave axe discovered in 1927 among the subterranean roots of a long-vanished pine forest. Taming this shifting wetland challenged even Victorian industrial builders when the Oswestry, Ellesmere and Whitchurch Railway was driven straight across Fenn's Moss in 1862. Because the ground was too waterlogged and unstable to carry ordinary masonry embankments, engineers floated the entire railway track across the peat. They wove thick mats of cut heather, wooden faggots, and compacted sand to distribute the weight across the surface, allowing steam trains to skim safely across the marsh.

The glacial meres of Quoisley and Llyn Bedydd

The open water around Whitchurch is defined by natural kettle holes hollowed out between 10,000 and 15,000 years ago at the retreat of the last ice age. Among the finest examples are Quoisley Meres, designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest in 1963 over an area of more than 28 hectares. In 1994, these water bodies received international protection under the Ramsar convention as part of the Midland Meres and Mosses wetland complex. The water in Quoisley Meres is exceptionally rich in natural nutrients, fostering vast floating beds of white and yellow water lilies across the open surface. Naturalists have catalogued 108 botanical species along the marshy margins, including rare specimens like tufted-sedge, marsh fern, and meadow thistle. Beneath the lilies, the undisturbed water provides shelter for healthy populations of pike, roach, tench, eel, and brown trout. The edges of Llyn Bedydd are bordered by tangled carr woodland dominated by water-loving alder and willow trees.

Comber Mere and Prees Branch Canal: abbey fisheries and otter havens

Water history run deep in the neighbouring estate of Combermere Abbey, founded in the 1130s beside a large natural lake about five kilometres away from Alderford. The name itself remembers an enclave of Celtic Britons who held onto the territory following the Anglo-Saxon conquest. About nine kilometres away from Alderford Lake, another waterway project transformed into a wild sanctuary at Prees Branch Canal Nature Reserve. Originally conceived as a commercial trade route extending the Ellesmere Canal to Prees, the enterprise ran out of steam and halted abruptly at Quina Brook. Modern navigation stops short at the marina basin, leaving the remainder of the abandoned canal channel to rest as an elongated freshwater pond.

This stagnant channel is now protected as a Site of Special Scientific Interest for its dense colonies of rare pondweeds. Dragonflies and diverse aquatic invertebrates patrol the water surface and dart through the air above the weeds. Secretive otters also make occasional journeys through these undisturbed shallows, hunting along the banks of the old industrial trench.

Alderford Lake shore: waterside trail, campsite and Lakeside Kitchen

The race venue at Alderford Lake occupies 14 acres of countryside outside Whitchurch. The recreational basin was shaped in 1991 on land that had previously operated as a traditional working family farm. Swimmers can rely on weekly water-quality testing that confirms clean conditions, alongside modern changing room facilities on the bank. For relay weekend, competitors establish base camp in designated pitches and bell tents, with camping open from Saturday morning until Sunday afternoon. During the late September event, the surrounding fallow deer enter their autumn rutting season. Supporters and off-duty swimmers can loop the lake on a flat 0.8-mile trail that winds along the grassy bank, or paddleboard out to explore the central islands.

Right at the water's edge sits the Lakeside Kitchen restaurant, with panoramic indoor tables and open-air seating. During the day, the kitchen serves afternoon tea complete with sandwiches, savouries, cakes, and warm freshly baked scones. It makes the ideal lakeside perch to watch teammates power out onto the lake before your own turn arrives.