Swimming siblings help veterans in 47km challenge

A 10-year-old boy, who was born on the anniversary of D-Day, is to swim the length of the five Normandy beaches to raise money for the veteran charity, Help for Heroes.

Toby, from Blackburn, said it did not "take much" effort to persuade his seven-year-old sister Pippa to join him for part of his Operation Swim challenge.

The pair will do the 2,430 lengths of the pool during June, to commemorate the landing of the Allied forces that marked the beginning of the end of World War Two.

Toby said he would be doing "all the strokes including butterfly because it's my favourite".

The Operation Swim challenge asks people to swim the equivalent lengths of one, two, three or all five of the Normandy beaches during June, with distances ranging from 5km (3 miles) to 46.5km (29 miles), to raise funds to support veterans.

Toby said he thought the challenge would be "really fun".

"I went to swimming club because I was told that I needed to learn to swim and I found out that I really liked it," he told BBC Radio Lancashire.

"So I got better and trained more and I've just got better" and the family is "very proud of us for doing it".

Pippa said she did not previously like swimming very much "but now I'm into it".

She is hoping to swim Gold Beach, which is 11.5km (7 miles) or 460 lengths.

Three of the siblings' late great-grandfathers fought during World War Two and Toby has a love of military history and aircraft.

His mum, Catherine, said: "Toby has a real love of aviation as well as swimming, and so he's very interested in a career in the armed forces.

"It's very important for us to not only recognise what they've done in the past but also make him aware of what his part might be in the future and that's why we choose to support them.

"They both work really hard at swimming and they really enjoy it."

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