Bumblebee Paddles

I haven’t got a clue what order these are supposed to go in. It would make sense to do them in the order they went on the towel but apparently they were on swimming costumes before they went on the towel, which means they’ve got out of order.

Ok, let’s start with something easy – the distances. I’ve got 5, 10 and 25m in the old STA oval/eye-shaped variety. Then I’ve got 50m in the small round ones. After that, 100, 200, 400, 600 and 800m are all in the style you almost recognise from today, with whales on them. Today’s aren’t the same design but you can see the evolution – they’re much the same size, they’re differentiated by different coloured borders etc. I’ve also completed my 1000m but it’s not on the towel, it’s not in the box of random loose badges where the 400m was lurking and I haven’t succeeded in tracking down a replacement on eBay. Some of them I did need to replace.

To add to that, I’ve completed my 2000m and my 1 mile as an adult. Swimming distance badges are surprisingly hard to buy if you’re not a qualified swimming teacher but I found a source. I also have a 3000m badge but it’s surprisingly hard to find the unlimited swimming session I’d need to earn that – I reckon two hours would do it but these days you have to book for specific sessions of usually only one hour.

I think these Teddy awards are probably quite early ones. I’ve had Teddy 2 (lime green) and Teddy 3 (orange) on my towel but I don’t have Teddy 1 (white) so that’s an eBay. I assume I had it at some point and it got lost. I mean, these badges are not exactly expertly sewn on and you can see where one or two have come off. They seem to still exist, according to an STA Awards order form and are marked “early years”, as are Pool Frogs 1-3. I don’t have them but my sister does. ASA Floater is probably also an early badge.

I have Beaver 1, which is apparently the first of 5 Watermanship Skills and the Puffin ASA badge – I don’t know if it’s related to the current Puffin which is an introduction to the Rainbow Distance Awards. Probably. Then there’s the Grade 1 Star water skills award. I’m sure I had 2 Star as well but my research has led to the discovery that there were five of these and I definitely didn’t do the whole set. It looks like we did badges completely randomly – a bit of this, a bit of that, all of those and rarely finishing a set.

I don’t know what Junior and Novice Swimmers are – they don’t seem to exist anymore so no clue about whether they’re absolute beginners or starting to gain competency.

Then there’s the Aquanauts set, 1-4, which are lifesaving badges and feels like a bit of a step up – “you’re capable enough now to help other people”, you know? I’ve also got Safer Swimming 1 & 2, which were sponsored by Eurocamp, just like the Aquanauts set. As a Keycamp kid, Eurocamp were the enemy but I now feel kind of fond of them.

International STA Cadet also seems like it’s on the more advanced side. And then there’s Young Diver and Junior Diver – we’re clearly out of the realms of learning to swim by the time I got to the end of lessons and getting into everything else surrounding the water – lifesaving, diving and presumably racking up more distances.

Then there are some more adult ones! I joined the Bluetits a few years ago to get comfortable in open water so I could maybe get comfortable falling out of my kayak, so I’ve got a Bluetits badge. I’m also a member of the Rebel Badge Club, which is a club that grew out of the Rebel Badge Book, a book of merit badges designed specifically for adults (and is now three separate badge books!). I did my Wild Swimming badge back in 2022, I think, so I’ve got that to go on my towel and I recently finished my Swimmer badge so I’ve got one of them too. I’d also like to get another Big Rebel Adventure 2025 badge for the towel but I’m going to wait until the Adventure is actually over in September and see if the price goes down – I don’t need a second swimming cap, I don’t need to be registered as an adventure participant and since the relay swim will be over, staff will no longer need to be paid and they may get sold off. We’ll see.

Now I’ve taken the first big step and snipped them off the towel, this is roughly what they might look like if I put them on my t-shirt, give or take that I’m still missing a 1000m badge. At some point, I might just have to bite the bullet and get a modern replacement. And one day, I might even add that 3000m badge!