Swimmer's Stories

Saturday September 24th....................... a report from Anna on her relay channel swim

It was an amazing day - we left ( Phil , Sue. Alex and Anna) eventually on Saturday morning.  That meant that instead of a 2am start, which was the time scheduled if we had gone on Tuesday, we now met the pilot at 6.15am and were afloat by 6.45am - we had so much baggage we almost sank the boat.

Sue (Croft) was in the water by 7.30am - there were already 2 swimmers leaving the beach and we waited our turn then she set off and soon had overtaken the solo swimmer who had left about 5 minutes before her.  He already looked tired and I wonder how far he managed to swim?

My turn was 3rd so I swam in lovely sunshine and a good swell - enough waves to break up my stroke, but I did a good first swim and was cold but not too bad at the end of it. An anxious moment came as I started my second swim, having just watched Alex swim through banks of little purple jelly fish.  Poor Alex also had the enormous wash from a super-tanker to cope with during that same hour.  I was not sure how I’d cope with clouds of jellies but thankfully, there were only a few left for me to contend with when i took over from him.

 My second swim was lovely, as the water had settled and I had slack tide so I think I covered a good bit of ground.  We were hoping to finish in under 12 hours, so I wasn’t too sure I’d need to be in the water for a 3rd hour but the French coast looked stubbornly distant so I was back in the water and after just 10 minutes felt cold biting through my whole body. I knew this one was going to be tough and it took immense will power to keep going.  I think by the end I had shut down apart from the mechanical action of swimming and the stubborn vision of completing that hour.  I didn’t go far that hour either, as the tide had picked up and was pushing me in the wrong direction.  Those lovely white cliffs of Cap Blanc Nez did not seem to come any closer - I think I covered 0.6 of a mile! 

Phil was a star in that 12th hour.  He swam amazingly - and the coast suddenly looked more achievable, so when Sue got in he stayed with her as it was getting dark, and we thought that they would soon be on the beach. 40 minutes later, he came out of the water and Alex and Sue took another 20 minutes to reach the shore, in the pitch black. Sue sometimes struggled with direction so Phil and Alex were like a couple of sheep dogs shepherding her in the right direction,  and even then, they missed the brightly lit shore at Wissant and ended up on a beach in pitch black! I was scared for them, as they disappeared into the distance once the boat reached the limit it could go.  They were tiny, distant lights and the search light barely showed where they were.  I remembered Jackie's description of her final strike for the French coast - and you are right, the people on the boat really have very little idea where the swimmers have got to.

I think we were almost exactly 13 hours for the crossing.

So - the worst things for me were the cold and the sea sickness which I had not anticipated - thanks to Jackie's pills, I got through the sickness and I had enough warm clothes and good friends to recover from the cold.  I would have found it incredibly hard to go back in the water for a 4th hour!

As our little boat turned back towards Folkestone, in the pitch black we passed  at least two solo swimmers still making their way to France, with several hours of swimming ahead of them and the gruelling fight against the tides still to come.  It was a beautiful starlit night, the air temperature as generous as you could expect for late September but I did not envy them  this battle. 

The best things - there were thousands of them. I had a brilliant day.  I swam with a seal ( I didn't know it at the time but I smelt his fishy breath! and the others watched him checking me out and then swimming off to have a look at the other channel swimmer who was quite close by at that stage)  and as Sue and Alex  were framed by a shooting star as they stood up on French sand in the pitch darkness of night. I swam my heart out and felt the immensity of swimming in such a huge expanse of water. It was a wonderful experience and I enjoyed every moment - even the bad ones.  

Anna Page

Reading  Matter for 2012

With it being an Olympic year listed below are some books about the history of the Olympics

Heat of the Moment - 25 extraordinary stories from Olympic and Paralympic history

Olympic Games through a lens - a photographic survey of the history of the Olympic Games

The British Olympics - Britain's Olympic Heritage 1612-2012

The Bumper Book of Slightly Forgotten but nevertheless still Great British Olympians and other Sporting Heroes

The Austerity Games- when the Games came to London in 1948

London Olympics 1908 and 1948

All available from Amazon http://www.amazon.co.uk

and from the Independent an article about  Susan Halter about the 1948 Olympics and her swimming life

and on swimming the new book The Story of Swimming, by Susie Parr covers the history of swimming in the UK from earliest recorded times (Romans onward) to the current revival in open water swimming. It is full of wonderful illustrations and photographs and includes a number of short pieces about the authors favourite swimming places.