BLIND swimmer John Breckenridge will swim 64 lengths of his local pool later this month to raise money for injured soldiers.

Mr Breckenridge, 51, is no stranger to charity swims. In the summer he swam 50 lengths of Kidlington and Gosford Sports Centre pool, raising £200 for Great Ormond Street Hospital.

Now the is bidding to raise as much as he can for the Help for Heroes charity, which supports soldiers and their families.

The pool will be marked with lanes and Mr Breckenridge said he relies on peripheral vision.

He said: “I’ve always enjoyed swimming ever since I was a child.

“Having arthritis and swollen joints as well as my blindness, the feeling of weightlessness and liberation it gives me is fabulous.”

He said: “My father Donald was in the Army and, hearing about all these young soldiers coming back, having lost their limbs, has just made me want to help.

“There are a lot of people worse off than me, including many who have lost their limbs in Afghanistan.”

Mr Breckenridge started to lose his sight as a child.

He said: “Ever since I was born my eyelids have drooped and I had several operations before I was five, but no one really knew what was wrong.

“Then as I got older, the surgery I had had to keep my eyes open wider, caused them to stay open, even when I was asleep, and my eyes would be constantly dry and at risk of ulcers.”

In the early 1990s Mr Breckenridge’s sight began to fail and he went for tests at Oxford eye hospital where he was diagnosed with Laurence Moon Syndrome, which leaves dark deposits on the retina.

Mr Breckenridge hopes to swim 64 lengths of Kidlington pool in about two hours on December 23.