A lifestyle club for the modern adventurer
Swim. Ride. Run. Become difficult to explain.
Silent by default. Opt in for the club’s cold-water chant — low voices, wind and black water. Remembered on this device.
01 / The founding story
An 1881 expedition to Svalbard, a walrus who could play cards, and a captain with a whip and no explanation for it.
The club’s founding tale has arrived, in the club’s own words: the diary of Simon Grundlethrope, in two parts, from the shelter at Hammerfest to the ice, the storm and the famous Walrus Run.
Club fiction, written and supplied by the club — not a historical document.
Read the founding tale02 / The race
HISTORICAL FORMAT · 2016We race each September · the annual club race
The slower you were, the sooner you went. Theoretically, everyone finished together.
The club races each September. The documented handicap format sent the previous slowest finisher — White Fang — out first; the rest followed in staggered waves. The fastest elapsed time earned the title Sir Walrus.
An account of the club’s past format, not an entry form. Race date, location and entry details for this September are confirmed by the club closer to the time.
Enter the water.
Question previous decisions.
Find your bicycle.
Maintain plausible deniability.
Proceed on foot.
Develop a better explanation.
The old pecking order: Pig · Slug · Cucumber · Monster · Beast · Seal Elite.
Read the 2016 account03 / The trophies
EVERY SEPTEMBER SINCE 2013Everything the club actually contests is decided on one September afternoon.
The Horn of Glory goes to the first home. It is a tusk. Nobody has ever suggested it should be anything else.
White Fang goes to the last home — the trophy, the title and the obligation to explain what happened, for a year.
The Golden Horn goes to the fastest woman home.
The season-long points championship, and the giant wooden Norse that went with it, fell away in recent years and has been retired from this site. 14 Septembers on the record, 2013 to 2026. Every finishing order, every time, and the three trophies.
Every year since 201304 / Objects of questionable significance
The previous race’s winner carries the walrus on their back.
A tradition with rather more presence than a certificate.
The wooden walrus, photographed by the club. His name remains his own business.
The illustrated imagination
Club lore. A very loose relationship with normality.
Supplied artworks, not documentary records.
Club lore · as the club tells it
Here begin the annals of an unusual club: of tusks, of handicaps, of a wooden walrus with an unusually demanding travel schedule. Some of this happened. All of it is told with feeling.
The previous season’s slowest finisher is sent away first, on the grounds that everyone should be equally inconvenienced. This is the honour of the White Fang.
The fastest elapsed time of the day takes the title Sir Walrus for the year, and with it the obligation to be modest about it in every retelling.
He travels on the back of the previous race’s winner. The walrus does not train. The walrus does not need to.
There is a song. It is sung. Nobody has yet produced evidence that it helps.
Ex aqua surgit, dentibus duobus,
Walrus intrepidus, frigore perfusus;
qui prior natat, laudem non accipit,
qui tardissimus, primus incipit.
Out of the water he rises, on two tusks,
the fearless walrus, drenched with cold;
whoever swims first receives no praise —
the slowest among us is the first to begin.
Written for the club as a piece of invented mythology. It is not a historical, liturgical or religious text, and no genuine manuscript stands behind it.
The handicap categories, rendered in heraldic form, as is proper for creatures of this standing.
Club mythology and comic self-regard, offered as such. It is not a record of verified events, a statement about any real person, or advice of any kind.
The moving image
Swim, bike and run footage in club colours.
The club anthem
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