angela jones

It’s around 6 a.m. on January 31, 1989.

A maintenance worker at Anderson Tool and Stamping Company on Mason Street, is taking out the trash.

When the worker steps outside and turns the corner onto the factory’s loading dock, he sees the body of a young black woman laying face down about 10 feet away below the loading dock.

The woman, wearing a black leather jacket and jeans, is covered in blood.

Later that day, she would be identified as 23-year-old Angela Jones.

Angela had been killed just hours before she is found her behind the Anderson Tool building.

She had been stabbed multiple times.

This episode is one that was especially thrilling to make, as it was the first one I actually recorded face to face – out in the open, hence the background sound of the river rushing by and the birds singing. Which is really appropriate as my guest, Angela Jones, spends almost as much time in the river as on dry land. Angela is a wild swimming specialist, a fitness instructor, a traveller, an adventurer and now an author. She has swum without a wetsuit amongst icebergs in Iceland, kayaked, swum and run the length of the river Wye and from coast to coast in Scotland. She’s also won international triathlon events, though she tells me she’s never been motivated by competition, and feels at her happiest in and around the river – and in particular the beautiful river Wye. “The river Wye flows through my veins and is my office and my playground,” she says.

In this episode Angela and I chat about her love of the river and wild swimming. She tells me about the worrying deterioration in the health of the river that she has noticed and logged over the years, and we talk about what we can do to make a difference and save our rivers. We discuss her appearance on a Panorama documentary about discharges of raw sewage into the river and finally she tells me about her wonderful new book, Wild Swimming the River Wye.

Resources
You can find out  more about Angela here.
To buy her fabulous book, Wild Swimming the River Wye click here.
Sign the petition Angela refers to here.
Watch the Panorama documentary on the river pollution scandal here.
Find more resources for saving our rivers on my website, here.
And watch us swimming together in the river here (and why not subscribe to my YouTube channel while you're there?!)