As dawn broke over Windermere on Tuesday, Pete Kelly set off in his kayak from the north shore of England’s biggest natural lake, armed with three test tubes. The water did not look tremendously inviting, a film of luminous green algae lapping up on the shingle beach at Waterhead. You should have seen it last week before the rains came, he said: “All of the water up this end was really dense and green.”
All summer Kelly has been paddling around Windermere collecting water samples for the sort of bacteria that upset swimmers’ stomachs – officially for a Dutch academic project, but also as the owner of Swim The Lakes, an adventure swimming company.
