keeping her past a secret from her children and grandchildren. her life is being commemorated in a new film, due to be released later this year. david sillito reports. mercedes gleitz, the first british woman to swim the channel, the straits of gibraltar, all the way around the isle of man. she was, in the 205 and 305, famous, a regular on the newsreels. they evene covered her wedding. they even covered her wedding. her honeymoon, another long distance swim. leaving today for turkey, to attempt the hellespont, and i hope to win for england this additional swimming honour. very, very nice. and then she disappeared from public life. indeed, even her own family only realised quite what she had achieved when they found her archive after she died. i knew my grandmother well, i spent a lot of time with her, but she never spoke to me about swimming. you knew nothing about the swimming?
it sounds sensible in theory, it sjust practise. whether drivers carry- on doing what they used to, whether pedestrians, cyclists get a false i sense of security now. |it s a question of getting peoplej to change their habits and think. there will be an awareness campaign about the highway code changes, but critics they is too late and not enough people know what is going to be different. danny savage, bbc news, york. a british woman with incurable cancer and her two team mates have broken the world record for rowing across the atlantic. kat cordiner, abbyjohnston and charlotte irving tookjust1i2 days to complete the 3,000 mile trip, knocking seven days off the previous record. they ve raised over £50,000 for cancer charities. a plaque has been unveiled today to honour the first british woman to swim the channel. mercedes gleitze made the crossing in 1927 and became a major celebrity in the years after for her multiple endurance swimming achievements. but then she slipped into obscuri
nothing, she never spoke to me about swimming at all. in fact, she lied about the fact that she was a swimmer to the neighbours that she lived with. you know, she was challenged, you know, you re mercedes gleitze, aren t you? she would deny who she was? it s laughable because it s obvious who she was, but she denied who she was because she didn t want that life any more. now, her life and the story of her repeated attempts to prove she really had 5wum the channel has been turned into a film. kirsten callaghan has spent three years training and swimming the swims. sometimes, if i lost my nerve, i would have to say, what would mercedes do, what would mercedes do? because she always stayed calm. itjust made me appreciate mercedes more for what she did, and how brave she was, to do it, and to do it alone. yes, she did it all on her own. a secretary who swam in her spare time and used herfame to raise money to build housing for the homeless. finally receiving a little of the recognition