Swim Serpentine 2025
Swim with Whisper in Swim Serpentine on Saturday 20 September 2025! We already have an allocation of charity places for 2025, so you're welcome to apply now.
Whisper is a very high-impact charity that funds a children's hospital, a maternity unit, a free ambulance and a nursing school in Jinja, Uganda. We achieve all this on an annual donation budget of around £250,000. Every £22 donated allows us to treat a child, an average that includes some lengthy inpatient stays. We estimate that every £279 donated saves a life that would not otherwise have been saved.
Swim Serpentine is an annual swimming event that takes place in the Serpentine lake in London's Hyde Park. You can find out more about the event on the official site. There are several available distances:
| Distance | Equivalent in lengths of a 25m pool |
|---|---|
| Half mile | 32 |
| One mile | 64 |
| Two miles | 129 |
| Six miles (not offered by Whisper) | 386 |
In return for a place we'd like you to donate or commit to raising at least £150 (Half Mile), £200 (One Mile) or £300 (Two Miles) for us.
If you're interested in buying your own non-charity place directly from the event organisers, you should click the blue "Register your interest" button on the Swim Serpentine home page, and they will let you know in 2025 when the places are on sale. In 2024 the 2 mile places were in high demand and sold out within a few hours. Swimmers with their own places are of course very welcome to fundraise for us too.
Let's take a quick tour of some of the things we do. This is Whisper's hospital; the hospital opened on another site in 2016 and moved to this building in 2018:
This is the ambulance in front of the hospital:
This is one of our operating theatres:
This is our delivery room in the maternity unit:
This is a lecture in our nursing school:
We can offer you:
- personal attention - we're a small organisation
- no registration fee
- advice and practical help with fundraising
I cannot tell you how inspiring this charity is. They do incredible work. I am raising money for Whisper but the support I am getting from them is fantastic. I have never had this before when raising money for charity. a previous runner in the London Marathon
