Kate founded The Outdoor Swimming Society in 2006. She grew up swimming in a river in Devon, and continues to swim all over the country. Her book Wild Swim contains 300 great outdoor swims around Britain, including all those featured in Robson Green's Wild Swimming Adventure (ITV, Dec 8th).

Read Kate's Best of Times, Worst of Times, in The Times or listen to Wilderness journeys on BBC Radio 4. In 2006/7 the OSS ran the Breastrokes charity swims in Windermere and Serpentine and raised over £150,000 for Cancer Research.

Kate's ambitions for 2010?

Triple OSS membership, establish OSS regional reps all over the country for social swims, pioneer my way down one or two new rivers... and have some brilliant OSS swims and parties.

To talk to Kate's agent please call Patrick Walsh.

Rob is the author of Mountains of the Mind and The Wild Places, and a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge -- where outdoor swimming has allegedly been going on since 1692. He is a mountain-climber whose ideal mountain day ends with a plunge in a river or loch or the sea. 

He's been winter swimming in Beijing's imperial lakes, in the Himalayas, and once went green after diving into a Devon lake on New Year's Day. He was a good friend and swimming companion of the late Roger Deakin, author of the swimming classic 'Waterlog'.

Cassie Patten is an OSS patron and one of our open water heroes, winning an Olympic bronze medal in the Open Water 10km swim in Bejing . A keen wild swimmer, growing up in Cornwall and taking to the seas and rivers with her two dogs wherever possible. In fact the first thing she did after the Olympics was take a wild-swim road trip with her dad - 'If it's mucky, I'm in it.' she says.

This year, Cassie has been swimming the channel, teaching OSS members how they can move that much more easily in the water and helping support our environmental projects.

See her at this year's OSS December Dip  and also from last year's December Dip on YouTube. 

Gail has been with the OSS from the start, and is passionate about helping it grow.

She has worked in the media as a marketing director, in the arts as a fundraiser, and now runs a creative consultancy developing brands and products across the creative industries and voluntary sector.

For any partnership or development ideas contact gail at Gail@galliegodfrey.com

Dan Bullock is behind many a remarkable transformation amongst OSS swimmers and summer 2010 is his biggest challenge yet: helping swimmers train for the Breakhrough Lakes10k.

Dan has been coaching OSS swimfit sessions since Spring 2009. He is a keen swimmer and a triathlete who has got many OSS members fit for adventures from the Bosphorus and beyond.

Dan's accolades  include a National Masters Champion (2008), a British AgeGroup Record Holder (800m) and is a Double-Ironman finisher. Dan also runs Swimfortri, a London-based company helping to improve the swimming technique of triatheletes the world over. 

His sessions are a great mixture of flawless skill, infectious motivation and general amenability and to our eyes he appears to have the perfect stroke.

As well as teaching people how to move more effortlessly and efficiently in the water, he’s a 9 year student of Bikram yoga.

Out of trees, off bridges, through limestone sea caves and down what seem a bit more like ditches: we can only thank Michael for broadening the type of swims we go on (having tested the safety and depth of the water first). Michael is a keen swimmer who pioneers swims across estuaries and down rivers under a full moon in Autumn. We thank him for that. And for having a boat.

In 2008 Michael led a core of OSS swimmers down the Bosphorus in Istanbul as part of a Turkish annual race, which made a nice break from his normal fixation with muddy estuaries. In 2009 he went one better: buying the an OSS wood-fired hot tub we have taken on the road to a series of events. See us on the bank after a long chilly swim....

Oliver was an early convert to the way of the Outdooor Swimming Society and has been up-hill and down-dale on swims - as well as stoking the hot tub, mulling the wine and making the chai.

Oli is a regular face behind the stall at OSS Events and is now picking up the tongs and the challenge of organizing the 2010 Midsummer Night's Swim (June 24th) and OSS December Dip (December 4th).

Plans are already underway, but if you have any thoughts, improvements or suggestions and would like to pitch in with anything from free cider to a band, just drop Oli a line via Facebook or email him at gospitt@gmail.com

Jumping into lakes, rivers and the sea as a child was a normal part of life for Laura, and she helped to instigate a tradition of 'lake bagging' at university, with extra points being earned depending on the temperature and items (or lack of) worn.

Finding the OSS was like finding the missing piece of the jigsaw, as it opened the floodgates to new and exciting swims. She has recently taken on the role of Volunteer Manager to help the society expand and continue its fantastic work in 2010 by recruiting and looking after out volunteer team.

After decades of bobbing about in the sea on holiday, Jo finally learnt to swim front crawl at the age of 38 so she wouldn’t be shown up by her young son Charlie when he started swimming lessons.

A Swimtrek holiday followed and got her hooked on open water swimming. Jo has since spent the last two years making up for lost outdoor swimming time by jumping into any lake, river or ocean she can. She swam the Coniston Water 5km (one of the early OSS social swims) and celebrated her 40th with a camping trip to the Lakes and a swim in Grasmere.

Jo is a busy mum who works full time in the Sports Business Group at Deloitte, where she is working on the inaugural Deloitte Ride Across Britain bike ride from John O'Groats to Lands End.

Jo is organising the OSS Derwent Water swim on the 23rd May.