ONE 15-year-old girl was determined not to let Covid stand in her way of heading off on a school expedition – even though she had to swim two of the county’s lakes, in winter.

Grace Mosedale is hoping to go to Peru in July as part of a Keswick School Expedition organised through Camps International, subject to Covid restrictions being lifted around the world.

Her original plan, to help fund the expedition, was to get some weekend work and a summer job but the pandemic put paid to any chances of that.

She considered doing a sponsored event in summer but felt that the timing wasn’t right so decided to have a go at the first Winter Tadpole Graham – a 7.5 mile circuit around Crummock Water and Buttermere but there’s a catch – you have to swim across each of the lakes.

The Tadpole was the brainchild of Andrew Graham (no relation to Bob Graham) and was conceived as a challenging swim / hike event for juniors based on the Frog Graham Round.

And Grace’s proud dad, Everest mountaineer Tim Mosedale, said: “Grace has done ‘The Tadpole’ a couple of times now in summer conditions but wanted to do an event that would stretch her both mentally and physically as well as being a challenge that would generate some sponsorship. So she then hit on the idea of a first ever winter Tadpole Graham round.!

And on December 20 Grace took it on, completing the round in just over four hours.

Tim added: “Her cousins Phoebe and Louisa volunteered to come and support the event and indeed Louisa ended up doing the swims as well. There was additional support from Andrew Graham who canoed alongside.

“Throughout the day they had to battle wind, rain and hail amongst some brief sunny spells. There was also a huge squall just when they were crossing Buttermere when it got very choppy and the water temperature was down to only 6°C.”

Grace’s challenge has so far raised more than £400. Got to GoFundMe and search for Grace Mosedale.