They always had t-shirts available to buy and I always meant to get one but somehow never did. I didn’t see any on display during this last visit, so I asked our friendly server Sandra if they had any shirts available somewhere. She said she’d go and find out. My request ultimately led to one of the young cooks having to open a trap door in the ceiling by the bathrooms and clamber into the attic to rummage around, where he found one lone shirt left in my size—and it happened to be black, the color you will find me wearing the most. I was so, so grateful to Sandra and the young cook. I absolutely love my shirt featuring Milo, and I’m glad we got to pay a visit to Milo’s memorial corner outside the restaurant after lunch. Thank you, Ned’s!

We’re in the middle of a brutal heatwave, and the only saving grace is that I have the time and ability to cool down with a swim every day. So I went down to the beach this morning with the aim of swimming early-ish and avoiding the worst of the heat. I didn’t entirely succeed because it was already about 30C/86F at 10 a.m. The water, though, was heavenly—cool and crystalline, with no strong current and barely any swell thanks to a gentle northerly breeze.

And I saw so much sea life! Far more than I’ve ever seen here before. No jellyfish, remarkably, but loads of little crabs scuttling along the sandy seabed, and dogfish (I think?), and something that looked like a bass out of the corner of my eye, and sparkly schools of whitebait. I had been excited to see a tiny sole in the rocks when I swam a few days ago, but this was next level. Between looking out for wildlife and being dazzled by the shimmer of sunlight in the water, it was the most entertaining and meditative swim. I also saw—separately—a lone beach shoe and a pair of goggles, but they were too deep to retrieve.

Yes, almost a year on from supporting the Jitterbugs Channel relay team, swimming continues to be my entire personality. My Instagram posts are basically just alternating pictures of Coco and the pool and/or sea, with some food and travel pics thrown in for good measure. I don’t have much more than that to show for myself, swimming-wise, other than some Garmin stats that I pay far too much attention to (it was blessing in disguise when I forgot to take my watch to the pool the other day—I just swam without thinking about how fast or far I was going).

But the very idea of “having something to show for myself” is problematic in ways that I’m only gradually coming to understand. I do not believe that anyone has an obligation to “live up to their potential” (whatever that even means), but there is definitely a Type A/perfectionist/overachieving part of me that thinks if I’m not somehow maximizing my abilities (whatever that even means), I’m failing. In terms of playing music, that thinking manifests as guilt about not practicing enough to improve my technique. In terms of work, it manifests as shame about not putting myself out there enough to get more and better jobs. And in terms of swimming, it manifests as embarrassment that I haven’t completed any big events or prominent swims.

I do realize that this is all hooey. I play the fiddle well enough to join in sessions and blissfully lose myself in the joy of making music. I do my job well enough to keep the work rolling in, including work that I enjoy and am really proud of. And I swim well enough to find it a relaxing and fun thing to do. There really doesn’t need to be anything more to it than that, and yet I repeatedly find myself entering swim events (like the Pier to Pier, coming up in just three days) and then backing out at the last minute—or, in the case of the recent Swim the Lake festival at Ardingly Reservoir, entering the event, attempting to do the swim, and then freaking out and not completing it. And we already know how my shot at swimming a Channel relay went…

But that Ardingly swim was a turning point, I think. I’m dealing with a fear of deep open water that I’m very much trying to get over, and the Ardingly swim was something of a test to see how I’m coming along. The test showed that I’m not as far along as I’d like to be in that regard, but it also showed that I might be aiming for the wrong thing. Ardingly was technically a race, though neither I nor any of the people I was swimming with approached it as such; it was just supposed to be a nice evening swim in a lovely location. It was also a very small, low-key affair. But it’s run by the Mid Sussex Triathlon Club and it had all the usual trappings of a race—competitor numbers written on hands, mass start when a whistle blew, almost everyone in wetsuits raring to go—which added a little edginess to the proceedings. I was already nervous about the swim itself, and this just made it worse. I certainly understand how some people get a buzz from that atmosphere, but I’m quite jumpy at the best of times, so whistles and whatnot aren’t great for my nerves (see also the klaxon on the boat during a Channel relay).

At Ardingly, I got through the start and swam a few hundred meters before my brain decided NOPE and my breathing got out of control. So I swam to the nearby safety kayak, and the nice woman paddling it told me to hang on to the end of it while I got my breath back and then swim again whenever I was ready. I got my breath back soon enough, but then I looked across the reservoir to the next the buoy I was supposed to swim to. It was not a (physically) difficult distance for me to cover, but when I thought about what it was going to (mentally) take me to get there, I realized that I just didn’t have it in me. I probably could have pushed through, feeling stressed and scared the whole time, but for what? A finisher’s medal, and avoiding the indignity of being taken the very short distance back to the start in a little boat? Admittedly, I could have done without the latter, because trying to get into the stupid boat was by far the worst part of the whole thing. But I considered it a win just to have gotten in the water at all that night. I didn’t want or need to put myself through anything more.

I’m grateful to have had that experience because it made me start to think seriously for the first time about what kind of swimming I really want to do. And after today’s glorious, languid solo swim, I’m starting to formulate an answer. Right now, I really want to do the kind of swimming where I’m the one who determines where I swim, when I swim, how far I swim, how fast I swim, who I swim with, and what the general vibe is. I acknowledge that I’m a good swimmer, but I also acknowledge that this doesn’t mean I have to “achieve” anything. I feel an internal pressure to push myself to achieve more, and I certainly have FOMO when I see the swimmers around me achieving more, but trying to become this different type of swimmer isn’t motivating me right now, it’s just stressing me out.

I’ve cut out part of an article from the December 2025 issue of Outdoor Swimmer magazine, which I keep posted by my desk. The title of the article is “Where does swimming fit in your life,” and it’s about training as an amateur (but serious) swimmer and keeping things in perspective:

“…keep sight of the fact that swimming is probably your hobby. It should add to your life and wellbeing. … Taking swimming seriously also doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with it. … If this means you don’t quite reach your full swimming potential, does that really matter? Surely it’s more important to enjoy your swimming and the role it plays in your life, rather than being the best possible swimmer you could be.”

I have not fully internalized this yet, but I’m working on it. So when I say I have nothing to show for myself, it both is and isn’t true. I have no finisher’s medals, no certificates, no ratified swims. But I do have all the swimming I’ve done since I first started getting into this swimming lark, some of it in the pool, some of it in the sea, some of it fun, some of it downright miserable, and all of it worthwhile just for its own sake.

I’ve been on something of my own private Dovercoaster over the past few months, ever since making the decision not to swim the Channel relay this year. That decision took a huge amount of pressure off me, but once the relief wore off and the reality set in, I (predictably) went into a bit of a tailspin. The ups and downs were not unlike being tossed around on a boat in heavy seas.

First, it proved tricker than expected to find a replacement for me, which made me feel guilty for leaving everyone in the lurch. The team had an alternate who initially stepped in when I bowed out, but then circumstances changed and the alternate wasn’t able to take my place after all. This meant that our coach, Christine, needed to find both a new team member and a new alternate. The team member issue was finally resolved when Esther (an experienced relay swimmer and all-around wonderful woman) agreed to join. There couldn’t have been a better person to have on the team in terms of both swimming ability and personality. The alternate situation never did get resolved, but with Esther taking my place, it felt like the team was set up for success in any case.

Second, I had a bit of an identity crisis. “Training for a Channel relay” had become my whole personality, so once I was no longer doing that, I didn’t know who I was anymore. I had been working towards this huge goal for the better part of a year, and suddenly it was gone—but instead of the comedown you get after reaching a goal, I had the comedown after reaching nothing at all. I’d been tremendously motivated to swim regularly when I was training for the relay, but when I no longer had to prepare for anything, I totally lost my swimming mojo. Swimming had been everything to me, but I went from swimming multiple times a week to not stepping foot in the water for weeks on end.

The few times I did get in the water, it didn’t go well. Christine invited me to swim one morning with several other women, including someone who was potentially going to be the team alternate. I hadn’t realized that I wouldn’t know any of the other swimmers, and I also hadn’t realized just how accomplished all of them would be: women training for Channel solos and long-distance lake swims, women who had already completed relays and triathlons, women who apparently had no qualms about wading into the sea and swimming alone for hours on end far from the shore. I stuck close to the beach and only managed about half an hour (it was mid-May and the water was still very cold). I met Jeremy for lunch afterwards, and as soon as I saw him, I started to cry. I felt like such an imposter, like I had absolutely no business being in the company of swimmers like that. I had imagined that I could someday be in their league, but now that seemed impossible. That was a real low point.

And third, I had no idea where I fit into the team anymore—if I fit in at all. I had agreed to continue doing the admin (and reader, there was SO much admin), so I was still involved in the logistics of getting the team cleared to swim. I was still going along on some training swims, but I often worried about whether my presence was a distraction. I still wanted to be around to support my friend Silvina especially, but I didn’t want to stand in the way of her bonding with the people she would actually be swimming with on the relay. And I had initially thought that I would be able to go along on the boat as support crew, but it turned out that wasn’t such a sure bet after all.

Many different factors determine the shape of a Channel swim. There are the tides and weather, of course, but also the specific boat and crew. Channel escort boats are very much not luxurious affairs; the ones I know of are small and fairly stripped-down, with room for maybe twelve people at most—and that’s not twelve people spread out on comfy seats, that’s a few people in the cabin piloting the boat and everyone else perching outside wherever they can, squished between all the supplies they’ve brought on board. A six-person relay team will take up half the space on the boat all on their own. When you factor in the boat pilot, the boat crew, and the official observer who is there to certify the swim, you already have a very crowded boat, even before accounting for anyone going along to support the swimmers.

Our coach Christine was obviously going to be the team’s main support person on the boat, and for a while it looked like someone else would also go as dedicated support for one of the team members who had a medical condition. It wasn’t clear how many boat crew would be accompanying the pilot, but even if it was just one person, that would mean a total of eleven people on board already. Basically, no one really knew whether there was going to be room for me, especially since I wasn’t going to have any specific function on the boat. So for months, people constantly asked me when the swim was happening and whether I was going, and I just had to keep saying “I don’t know.”

Even though I understood the reasons for it, this not-knowing was frustrating; the team’s “tide” (the window of time in which they could potentially be called to swim) was from August 17 to 21, so the middle of August was just one big question mark both on my calendar and in my mind. As August 17 drew closer without bringing any clarity, I began to assume that I wouldn’t be going after all. And honestly, I was okay with that. I had thought it would be a fun experience, and I knew I would feel left out when the swim started and I wasn’t there to cheer on the team in person, but I had to acknowledge that I was kind of a random element in this whole thing: associated with the team but not on the team, a supporter but not essential support. In a way, the assumption that I wasn’t going was a relief because it meant I didn’t have to wait for clarity anymore. Once again, all pressure was off.

On the morning of Tuesday, August 12, I was just finishing a cup of coffee before heading out for a swim (my swimming mojo did, obviously, return) when Christine called. I don’t remember her exact words, but it was along the lines of: “The team has a slot to go out on Thursday night, would you like to go?”. I was so surprised I could barely string a sentence together. I wasn’t expecting such an early date for the swim OR the opportunity to actually be on the boat. I babbled something about yes, of course, if there’s room for me, absolutely.

And then the kicker—Christine said: “My passport has been stolen, so I won’t be going along.”

Um.

This was very much not on my bingo card of potential scenarios. Christine was the glue holding together a very disparate group of people. She is a calm, reassuring presence, someone who has swum the Channel solo herself and guided many other swimmers across as well. The team was named “Jitterbugs” because this was the name of a team she had been part of with her brother twenty years ago—and this twentieth-anniversary swim was going to be extra special because Christine’s nephew was one of the team members. There was no way I could imagine the Jitterbugs setting out on their swim without Christine there to guide them.

But when a Channel pilot offers you a confirmed slot, it’s very risky to pass it up because you don’t know when or if the opportunity is going to come around again (and in this case, the weather was due to change that weekend, so it’s very possible the opportunity wouldn’t have come around again). Considering this, it made sense for the team to go. Christine said that I could take her place, as it were, just to keep an eye on everything and make sure everyone had what they needed for a successful swim. I had absolutely no faith in my ability to do this, but I also realized that it was probably me or nothing at that point. So it was me.

I spent all of Tuesday and Wednesday speedily acquiring stuff to bring on the boat: a flashlight and camping lights for the first hours of the journey (because we would be setting off in the dark), bottles of water, food that was easy to prepare and digest (pots of oatmeal, ramen, crackers, cookies, fruit), stuff to make hot drinks (tea bags, instant coffee), seasickness medicine, headache medicine, sunscreen, clothes for the chilly nighttime, clothes for the sunny daytime. I was very aware of not wanting to bring too much stuff, because the boat pilots hate that, but I also knew I’d be stuck on a small vessel for an indefinite amount of time, so if I needed something, I’d need to have it with me from the start. I live in fear of not prepared for every possible scenario, but by Wednesday evening I figured I’d done all that I could, so I was as ready to go as I’d ever be.

On Thursday morning, Christine called again. She was at the passport office, and it turned out there was a very, very slim chance she might be able to get a fast-tracked passport before the boat set off that night. She needed all the supporting evidence she could get to prove that the boat was booked, all the fees had been paid, all the paperwork was submitted, and everything had been cleared for the crossing—but she didn’t have this evidence because I was the team admin, so all correspondence with the boat pilot and CSPF had gone through me. What followed was two absolutely frantic hours as I trawled through documents and attempted to forward them to Christine, all the while trying to stay calm and not to get my hopes up that this was actually going to work.

Somehow, it worked. At lunchtime, Christine forwarded me a picture of her confirmed passport application, and I wrote “OMG does this mean you get to go?” and she wrote “Yes!” and I wrote “AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH” and then I had a little cry of relief and dance of joy. And suddenly everything seemed much more manageable and, frankly, much more fun. This was really happening, and I was going to be part of it after all.

Silvina picked me up Thursday evening after dinner and we made the 2+ hour journey to Dover. Even the drive itself somehow felt iconic to me, because I’ve read so many accounts of Channel swims and the majority start with a nighttime drive to Dover. A Channel swim takes an average of maybe twelve to fifteen hours, and a lot of swims set off in the dark so the swimmer(s) will land in France in daylight (rather than starting in the day and swimming into darkness, which can be dispiriting). We were scheduled to meet at the marina at 11 p.m., be on the boat at 11:30, and have the first swimmer in the water around midnight. With this in mind, I had tried to sleep a bit earlier in the afternoon, knowing I was going to be awake throughout the night and into the next day. I hadn’t been very successful, but I figured adrenaline would keep us all going.

The adrenaline certainly hit once we arrived in Dover and loaded up the boat. The minute I saw the ladder at the back of the boat leading down to the water, I had a flashback to the Ramsgate swim camp which gave me a spike of anxiety followed by a feeling of intense relief that I wouldn’t have to descend that ladder at any point (unless something went very, very wrong). As predicted, it was a tight squeeze on the boat, so we stowed our gear as best we could and then settled into whatever seat we could find for the safety briefing.

The safety briefing unexpectedly gave me another surge of anxiety; I honestly hadn’t given much thought to the possibility of a disaster at sea, but as one of the crew ran through some potential scenarios and explained what we should do if, say, the entire crew was “incapacitated” and we had to trigger the emergency beacon, I felt my heart rate jump. We were on a small vessel heading out into a large, unpredictable, and extremely busy body of water, and as much as I didn’t fancy jumping into that water voluntarily, I really didn’t fancy finding myself in it involuntarily.

There was no time to back out now, though. We were told that the weather would be closing in towards the end of the next day and we needed to get the swim under way as soon as possible—so the pilot fired up the engine at around midnight and we motored out of the marina and down the coast to Samphire Hoe beach. The boat idled off the beach while the first swimmer, Rafe, jumped into the water, swam to the beach, got out and stood clear of the water to wait for the boat’s klaxon to sound, signaling him to get back into the water and start the swim for real. And with that, we were off.

Rafe swam hard for an hour, followed by Dan, Esther, and Phil. All of them had to swim in the pitch black, the only light coming from a small spotlight on the boat and the tiny flashing green lights they each wore clipped to the back of their goggles and swimsuit. It was 4:20 in the morning and still dark when Silvina got in for her first swim. Remembering how scary we’d both found the night swim in Ramsgate, I’d really hoped for her sake that the sky would already be light when she had to swim, but there was just the barest hint of red on the horizon when she plunged into the water and set off.

As she spent that hour in the water, all of us on the boat were treated to the most fabulous sunrise. Silvina said later that it was the changing light in the sky that kept her going, and although she had been terrified, experiencing that dawn light while finally swimming the Channel was truly profound for her. The sky was all pastel glory by the time George, the final swimmer in the rotation, got to do his first hour. And then suddenly it was day, and we could see the white cliffs of Dover in the distance, and tankers and container ships and ferries, and the gorgeous green-blue water all around us. It was glorious.

It was also…not actually going very well.

The shortest distance from England to France is from Dover to Cap Gris-Nez. But because of the very strong tides in the Channel, which change direction about every six hours, it is (almost) impossible to swim straight across. The swimmer who currently holds the record for the fastest crossing (6 hours and 45 minutes!) did just that, as you can see from his track, but that is an almost unheard-of feat. Everyone else gets carried up and down the Channel with the tide (which flows northeast-southwest, like a river changing direction, not “back and forth” between England and France). The boat pilots use the tide times, weather, and individual swimmer speeds to plot the best course across the Channel, ideally avoiding being swept too far northeast or southwest.

I’ve seen the tracking from the other boats that were out with swimmers that day, and everyone got pushed quite far to the northeast—but we got pushed really far. Like, after the first six hours, we were heading for Belgium instead of France. Also, for a while it was uncertain whether one of the swimmers was going to be able to continue; if they didn’t continue, the rest of the team could theoretically still keep going, but the swim wouldn’t be officially certified even if they made it to France. ALSO, the boat’s left engine broke down(!) after we’d been out for about eight hours, so Esther had to swim in a circle around the boat for a good half hour while it was repaired (again, the official relay rules require each swimmer to be in the water for precisely one hour, one after the other, so Esther had to keep the cycle going even though the boat itself wasn’t going).

We were so far off course and so many things were going wrong that the swim was very nearly called off. After much negotiation and discussion with the pilot and amongst the team, the decision was made to carry on for the time being. Everyone gave it their all on their second swim, and by around noon (after being on the water for twelve hours already) we were actually back on track, heading in the right direction, making decent progress. Whereas before it had seemed like stopping was the only sensible option, now it was clear that we would not be turning back. Christine was determined that the team was going to get to France, even if it took another twelve hours—and at that point, it looked like it might.

I’ll say here that I had spent the first eight hours of the journey feeling seasick. Despite having taken seasickness medicine, and despite not typically getting seasick, we were barely an hour out of the marina when I started feeling off. I tried to convince myself it was just tiredness and nerves, but by the time I was barfing over the side of the boat (remembering the advice from Ramsgate not to puke into the wind or onto a swimmer), it was pretty clear what was happening. I wasn’t massively ill, but I was just nauseous enough that all I wanted to do was sit very still with my eyes closed. And that’s pretty much what I did through the hours of darkness, with occasional interludes to make a cup of tea or take some pictures and videos. I felt crummy, but even worse, I felt absolutely useless, just taking up space—not swimming, but also not helping. It wasn’t great.

When the sun rose—and perhaps because the sun rose and I could see the horizon—the seasickness disappeared. I wasn’t 100% sure it wasn’t going to come back, though, and I was also very afraid that I might get a migraine. And by noon, I had been awake for something like 29 hours, and there had been a lot of emotional and psychological ups and downs with the team, and I was pretty wiped out (even though I was the one person on the boat not really doing anything). And the boat, as mentioned, was quite cramped, and precisely because I felt like I wasn’t contributing, I spent a lot of time trying to make myself as small and unobtrusive as possible. So honestly, the thought of spending another twelve hours bobbing slowly towards France—and bearing in mind that we’d still have to make the 3-hour return journey to Dover—was rather daunting.

But I wanted the team to make it all the way across as much as they wanted it. I knew how important it was to each of them, and it was unthinkable to have come so far and not go all the way. We were going to hold on for however long it took, and if that meant landing on a bunch of rocks in the dark (the worst case scenario, but one that certainly does happen—the best case is landing by La Sirène and having them bring out champagne, which also does happen!), then so be it. We were in this for the long haul.

The long haul turned out to be much shorter than expected.

I don’t really know how it happened, but at some point in the mid afternoon, it became apparent that we were making much better progress than anticipated. Suddenly there was talk of finishing in just a few hours instead of the middle of the night. The cliffs of Dover had receded a good while back, while the coast of France drew nearer and nearer. Everyone was on their third swim by this point, and they were all looking strong and confident, despite being thrown around in the growing waves. When Silvina climbed back on board after her final swim, she was sure she hadn’t moved forward at all for the past hour. I said, “Silvina, look”, and I pointed past the front of the boat to the sandy French beach that was suddenly right there, so close that you could see people strolling along the water, and houses perched in the dunes, and cars moving along the road behind them. It was only 5:30 p.m., and it was clear that within the next hour, the Jitterbugs were going to become successful Channel swimmers.

George was the next swimmer in the rotation. The water was too shallow for the boat to move any closer to the shore, so when George jumped in for his swim, he was accompanied by Dan as a support swimmer. And because it wasn’t 100% certain that George would reach the beach within the hour, he was also followed by Rafe, who would have been next up in the rotation and could have overtaken George in the water if necessary to keep to the relay rules. After the many long and, frankly, often tedious hours crossing the open Channel, that last hour was a nail-biter as all of us on the boat squinted anxiously at the three swimmers moving slowly towards the shore, trying to gauge distance versus swimming speed to figure out whether George was actually going to land it or if Rafe would have to sprint for the finish.

George landed it. We could see from afar that he was promptly surrounded by well-wishers on the beach—and because he appeared to be on his own with two support swimmers, we laughed that everyone probably assumed he had just finished a solo (complete in his baggy board shorts). Sometimes, if the conditions are right, all the members of a Channel relay team will be allowed to swim to the shore so they can all stand on French soil together. In this case, three members got to experience the French beach and the other three had to watch from boat. While apparently there were time and safety concerns about letting everyone go, I can’t help but wish that Silvina, Esther, and Phil had been able to join their teammates on the beach.

Not that this dimmed anyone’s excitement! We all shrieked and clapped and hugged in joy and disbelief. As soon as George, Rafe, and Dan were back on board, the pilot turned the boat around and gunned it for Dover while the rest of us cranked up the tunes and popped champagne and recounted the (loooong) day’s events, musing on how often it had seemed like everything was going to fall apart, and how remarkable it was that everything hadn’t. You can put in months of training and planning, you can pay all the fees, you can prepare to within an inch of your life, but there’s never any guarantee that a Channel swim is going to work out. That’s the nature of the Dovercoaster. And that’s what makes success all the sweeter.

It was a bumpy few hours back to England. The sun went down and the champagne ran out and the boat quieted down as the tiredness set in. I don’t think I was the only one to nod off before we reached Dover. When we did finally pull into the marina (at 9:30? 10? I honestly have no idea…) and unloaded the boat, I felt depleted in every possible sense—physically, mentally, emotionally. As the team took joyous photos on the dock and discussed where to go for a celebratory drink, I stood there starving, tired beyond belief, and absolutely desperate to be alone (actually, I was absolutely desperate to be home, but I was staying overnight in Dover, so home would have to wait). I was obviously delighted for the team, but my happiness was of a different quality than theirs. I was happy to have witnessed their success, but it wasn’t my success (yes, I made a small contribution to it, but things would have turned out just fine without me). And after being awake for something like 38 hours, and spending 22 hours of that time on a tiny boat with eleven other people, and 8 hours of that time feeling sick, I needed more than anything in the world to just sit still by myself for a minute, and eat something, and go to sleep.

Silvina and I were sharing a hotel room, and once we’d gotten checked in, she ventured out to find food and some other team members. Meanwhile, I sat on the bed and devoured a pot of instant noodles (unspeakably delicious), took a shower (pure bliss—amazing how briny you can get without ever entering the water), downed a cup of peppermint tea and a few cookies, spent an unreasonably long time trying to figure out how all lights worked in the hotel room, and then collapsed in an exhausted heap.

It was cool and cloudy in Dover the next morning. Silvina and I packed up the car and grabbed breakfast outside the hotel, and then I nipped in to the restroom while Silvina crossed the street to see what was going on the harbor. There was a rowing event happening, and there were (as always) swimmers doing their Channel training. This is where Silvina and some other team members had completed their multi-hour qualifier for the relay, which Silvina said was absolutely brutal—swimming in circles for hours in the frigid and frankly dreary harbor, hoping you passed muster with the people assessing your ability to take on the swim.

When I went to join Silvina, she was standing on her own gazing out over the silvery water of the harbor to the open Channel beyond. That’s when the magnitude of what she and the rest of the team had achieved finally hit me. I knew how hard Silvina had trained because I had been right there beside her for much of it. I knew how many uncertainties she had overcome, and I knew how much this challenge meant to her. I knew what an amazing feat it was for small, fragile human beings to swim across that unforgiving expanse of water because I’d watched them do it for eighteen straight hours, giving everything they had even when they were cold and scared and not sure they were going to succeed. I snapped a picture of Silvina standing there and suddenly every emotion I hadn’t really processed in the past 48 hours (and the past week, and the past three months) bubbled to the surface. When Silvina turned around, I said, “This is weird, but seeing you standing there like that has made me really emotional”—and then we both burst into floods of tears and hugged very tightly for a very long time.

This wasn’t the journey I expected when I said yes to the relay almost a year ago, but it also wasn’t a journey I could have imagined in any form even just a year and a half ago. I didn’t swim the relay, but I did train for it, and that alone was tremendously challenging, pushing me to do things I didn’t realize I had it in me to do. I didn’t swim the relay, but I dedicated a lot of time and effort to ensuring that everyone else could swim. I didn’t swim the relay, but I witnessed an English Channel swim first hand, and not everyone is lucky enough to do that. I didn’t swim the relay, but I got to see the relay through to the very end, and it was a successful end. The Dovercoaster was a rough ride in every sense—but wow, what a ride.

The choice that had landed me in this particular situation was my decision back in October to say “yes” when asked if I wanted to join an English Channel relay team, followed by my decision in January to sign up for a Channel swim training camp in Ramsgate. Our swim coach, Christine, had encouraged us to attend the camp because it’s a great opportunity to swim with a boat, practice relay changeovers, swim in the dark, spend more time in cold water, ask questions about the Channel swimming experience, and get to know other Channel swimmers.

I booked a spot straightaway, as did two of my other teammates. I arranged with my teammate Silvina to share an AirBnb in Ramsgate, and Silvina kindly agreed to drive the two of us there and back. She picked me up on Friday morning and we headed off on the two-hour journey, chatting nervously all the way. It was a gorgeous day and the trip was fine, but we were both massively apprehensive about what we were getting ourselves into. We’re both good swimmers and we’d been training hard, but neither of us had ever done anything like this before, and we really didn’t know how we would cope.

Things didn’t get off to a great start. Based on the rough schedule we had been sent, we thought the camp would begin with some talks, which would give us a chance to catch our breath and have a bite to eat before setting out for our first swim. But open-water swimming is entirely weather-dependent, meaning that schedules can change at any time—and no sooner had we parked the car in Ramsgate than we were told: “Right, we’re heading out on the boat now!” The weather on Sunday was shaping up to be bad, so the decision was made to swim as much as possible on Friday and Saturday and do all the talking on Sunday instead.

Silvina had just driven for two hours, both of us were tired and hungry, and neither of us were mentally prepared for this change of plan, but we tried to roll with it. I scarfed down a cheese sandwich I had (thankfully!) stuck in my bag before leaving home, and we got our swimming gear together as fast as possible.

There were eight swimmers attending the camp: three soloists, two women from another relay team, and the three of us from my team. We were divided up for the first swim, with the three members of my team going out in a smaller rigid inflatable boat (RIB) and everyone else going on the larger Sea Satin. As we motored out of the marina and up the coast on that first trip, all I could think was: “What the HELL am I doing here??” Thank goodness for Silvina, who was in the same state as me. We just kept trying to reassure one another that we were going to be okay. Meanwhile, my heart was in my throat and my stomach was somewhere around my feet.

The boat finally came to a stop and it was time for us to swim. To get into the water from the RIB, you sit on the side of the boat and slide in (as opposed to the bigger boat, where you climb down a ladder to a small platform to enter the water). I went first: I dangled my legs in the water for a second, and then in I went. It was the first time I’d ever plunged into water that cold (13C/55F) rather than wading in slowly to get acclimatized, and it was also the first time I’d gotten off a boat into open water. It took my breath away for a minute, but once we were all in and had done a bit of breaststroke to get used to the situation, we started some relaxed front crawl and…it was really nice? I had thought I might freak out about being in such deep water, but once I got going, I was at ease. The conditions were gorgeous, the small boat was right next to us, and the swimming felt quite comfortable thanks to the current carrying us along. The only thing that stopped us after 40 minutes was the cold; none of us were in neoprene, and by the end of the swim my hands and forearms were so cold I couldn’t even tell when they were entering the water with each stroke (my right hand was also starting to go into a frozen little claw, which is apparently a thing that happens?). Getting back into the RIB was maybe the hardest part of the whole swim: since there’s no ladder, you cling to the side and get hauled aboard like a giant fish. Once on board, we wrapped ourselves in our changing robes and the boat zoomed back to the marina. We were shivering and chattering, but we were also pretty elated that our first swim had gone so well.

I wish I could say the weekend continued in that vein for me, but it really didn’t. All the relay swimmers went out on the bigger boat that afternoon to practice the relay changeover process and get more time in the water. The rules for officially certified Channel swims are very strict (have a look at the Channel Swimming and Piloting Federation or the Channel Swimming Association if you’re curious), and relay teams are immediately disqualified if they mess up the changeovers between swimmers. It adds another layer of stress to an already very stressful situation, and even in the practice situation this weekend, I didn’t deal with it very well (having a klaxon go off just before you get in the water is unsettling to say the least). Also, the Sea Satin is not a huge boat, but a boat of any significant size seems intimidatingly large when you’re bobbing in the water next to it. For my first swim off the Sea Satin, I climbed down the ladder trembling with nerves, plunged off the back, immediately took in a huge mouthful of seawater and then a huge lungful of fuel exhaust, and proceeded to flap around the boat hyperventilating in panic for ten minutes before clambering out and collapsing in a sobbing heap on the deck. It was not my finest moment.

Once I’d calmed down and warmed up, I had to go back in again. The second time around was much better, and I was able to swim steadily around the boat without freaking out for about 15 minutes before getting out. The women from the other relay team who had witnessed my initial meltdown were perplexed—they said I was a beautiful swimmer, and they couldn’t figure out how I’d gone from not even being able to do breastroke around the boat to whizzing around in smooth front crawl like it was no problem. My only explanation is that once I start to panic, like I had during the previous swim, I feel the need to get out of the panic-inducing situation IMMEDIATELY. I haven’t yet figured out how to work through that feeling and calm myself down while remaining in the scary situation. I managed to avoid panicking during the second swim off the big boat, but the first swim was doomed from the start.

That was pretty much the story of the weekend. We were out on the big boat all day Saturday, in really glorious conditions: sunshine, sparkling water, hardly any breeze. The plan was to get in and just swim around the boat for as long as possible. The soloists were going to try longer swims where they could practice their feeding plan (i.e. eating/drinking while in the water), and some of the relay swimmers were going to try to do their assessment swims (to be cleared to swim a relay, you have to swim for 1.5 hours, be out of the water for 1.5 hours, then swim for another hour in sub-16C water wearing just a normal swimsuit, goggles, and swim cap). I already knew I wouldn’t manage my assessment swim this weekend, but I didn’t know that even regular swims would defeat me. The boat wasn’t deliberately moving anywhere on Saturday, it was just drifting with the current like we all were. But sometimes the current would pull me away from the boat or pull the boat away from me, and every time that happened, I lost it. There was a point where I thought the boat was accelerating away from me, and I actually whimpered in the water “Don’t leave me!” and swam like a demon to catch hold of the back of it before I was ostensibly left behind.

I should note here that nobody was ever going to be “left behind.” Every swimmer in the water had somebody’s eyes on them at all times, and if someone started drifting too far from the boat, they were quickly corralled back. Equally, if someone was in real trouble, they would immediately be pulled out (this happened to one swimmer who got very, very cold). But my brain refused to trust the safety protocols, and every time the boat got just slightly beyond reach, the panic set in and I had to swim and grab hold of it again. This is exactly what you can’t do during a Channel relay; once you’re in the water for your relay leg, you can’t so much as touch the boat again until your hour is up and you’re getting out. And as this went on and on, with me constantly and compulsively grabbing for the boat, I thought: “There is no way I’m going to manage the relay.”

I did have one okay swim on Saturday, where I just swam up and down alongside the boat instead of going around it. And even the night swim on Friday was not the disaster it could have been. Everyone was paired up for that, and we were told to swim from the boat to a nearby beach and back again with our swim buddy (because swimming to the beach is how you start any Channel swim). The beach wasn’t that far away, but Silvina and I (swim buddies) agreed beforehand that there was no way we were swimming to that beach. We decided to get in the water and stick by the boat just to get a feel for nighttime swimming. We were doing okay until the motorized dinghy at the back of the boat started descending into the water unexpectedly while we were bobbing nearby because two swimmers had gone to the wrong beach and needed to be herded back to the right one. We were also having goggle issues which, combined with the blinding spotlight on the boat, made the whole experience totally disorienting. We got through it, though.

But even before the night swim, after just two swims off the big boat, I was having serious doubts about whether I was cut out for any of this. It’s not just that it was hard—and it was SO hard, maybe the hardest situation I’ve ever voluntarily put myself in, pushing me so far out of my comfort zone that I might as well have been on another planet—it was that I kind of hated all of it. It wasn’t a case of “I really want to do this but I’m struggling,” it was a case of “I REALLY don’t want to do this.” The good swims were enjoyable enough, but they were vastly overshadowed by the stress of the bad swims. Silvina and I kept telling each other we should be proud of what we were achieving, but I didn’t feel proud at all, I felt desolate—because by Friday night I had already started thinking that maybe I shouldn’t do the relay, and by Saturday night I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to do it even if I tried. And I had no idea how to get out of it.

We went for dinner with our coach and some other swimmers on Saturday, and while my body was sitting in the pub, my mind was spinning off in a million directions, wondering what I should do, when I should tell Christine I was having doubts, what might happen if I went ahead with the swim and what might happen if I didn’t, and how many people I would be letting down if I backed out now—if I even could back out now. I’ve taken this relay challenge very, very seriously. I knew when I signed up that it was a major commitment, and it would be only under the most extreme circumstances that I would break my promise to my team. But this felt like extreme circumstances. Back in November, I wrote: “I know I have to believe I can do it or else I really won’t be able to do it.” And by Saturday night, I absolutely did not believe I could do it.

After dinner, Christine came over to sit by me. She said I should think about attending another swim camp at the end of May to work on getting my breathing under control. And I said outright, “Christine, I don’t think I can do this.” I told her that I honestly didn’t think I would be able to get the panic response under control by August, and that there was a very good chance I would freak out during the relay and disqualify all of us, and that I didn’t want to abandon the team, but I also wasn’t doing anyone any favors by carrying on as if I were okay when I’m really not.

And Christine simply said: “Okay, you’ll keep training for next year instead.”

Now, the relevant factor isn’t whether I actually try again next year or not. The relevant factor is that I immediately felt a monumental sense of relief. Every minute of the weekend had been adding another ounce of pressure to the already crushing weight on my shoulders, and as soon as Christine said “it’s fine, you’re just not ready yet this year,” the weight vanished and I could properly breathe for the first time since leaving Brighton on Friday morning.

The weather was passable enough on Sunday morning, so we went out on the boat one last time for a chance to swim in rougher (and, frankly, more realistic) conditions. I had already decided I wasn’t going to do another swim, so instead I stood on the deck and helped keep an eye on everyone in the water. It got blustery and there was a good swell, and as I watched the swimmers fight through the chilly waves and push themselves to keep going around and around the boat, even as the wind picked up and they were all tossed to and fro, I felt nothing but admiration for their determination and a calm certainty for myself—the certainty that I do not currently have that same mental drive or stamina, and I totally accept that.

So, here it is: I’m not swimming a Channel relay this year after all. Or perhaps I should put it this way: I’m not swimming a Channel relay this year—but I will still be part of a Channel relay. I told Christine I wanted to stay involved however I could, and I also told her that I’d enjoyed helping out other swimmers on the boat over the weekend (the swimmer who got very cold and needed help getting dressed and warmed up again, a swimmer who needed an asthma inhaler passed down to them in the water, etc.). So now I’m going along on the relay as part of the support crew on the boat, or maaaaybe even as an observer. That would be more admin, but it turns out I’m fairly good at both swimming and admin, and at least admin doesn’t (usually) give me a panic attack.

There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that I’ve made the right choice, and there is not the smallest part of me that feels any regret. I wrote in November that “I would regret it forever if I didn’t at least try,” and I feel after this weekend that I’ve given it a really good try. The training camp gave me the tiniest taste of what it’s like to swim the Channel, and I know in my heart that I’m not ready for it yet. But as someone said to me over the weekend, the Channel isn’t going anywhere. When and if I am ever ready, it will be there waiting for me.

To be precise, I’m training to swim the English Channel as part of a six-person relay team. That means I will NOT be swimming the entirety of the English Channel myself. The six of us will each swim for an hour at a time on our own, starting from a beach in Dover at about one in the morning and (ideally) ending up on a beach in France probably about 15 hours later.

Trust me, no is more surprised by this turn of events than I am.

A year ago, I wrote about my lifelong love of the sea and the start of my sea swimming journey. That love has only grown more intense over the past year as swimming has kind of come to dominate my life (in a good way!). I dipped in the sea all last winter while also taking Seabirds classes and doing the Pool to Pier program, so I was at the pool at least twice a week and in the sea at least once a month. And somehow, instead of getting tired of it, I found myself enjoying it more and more.

It was partially the joy of getting better at doing something—and, in my case, the joy of getting better at a physical activity when I have always, always, always considered myself “not sporty” and “not an athlete.” When I started taking pool lessons in January 2023, I remember that a more advanced class was being held at the same time, and I was in awe of the women who were able to swim back and forth non-stop for half an hour. I could barely do 50 meters before I had to catch my breath. But at some point, I realized I was the person swimming back and forth non-stop. The progress was so gradual that I hadn’t even noticed it.

It was a real milestone for me the first time I swam 1k in the pool. When I knocked out 1.5k pretty quickly for the Cancer Research UK Swimathon this past April, the woman keeping track of my laps said “You should have done 2k!”. She was right, but such a distance had been unthinkable when I’d signed up to the challenge months before. When I started the Pool to Pier classes a year ago, I wrote that I couldn’t imagine ever being able to swim around Brighton Pier, or from one pier to the other (which is “only” about 1k). And this summer, I swam from one pier to other, and I felt like I’d conquered the world. (I still haven’t tried to swim around the pier because I’m too freaked out by the idea of it, but that’s another story.)

I would still say I’m very much not sporty and not an athlete, but I can’t deny that I’m actually a pretty good swimmer. And that’s quite convenient, because I adore being in the water. I love the crystal turquoise of a pool, and I even find the smell of chlorine strangely comforting in a Proustian sort of way. But I also love the sea and how the saline water buoys you up, making swimming feel almost effortless when the wind and tide are in your favor. I’ve insisted over the past two years that I don’t actually love cold-water swimming, I just swim in the cold water here because it’s the only water available to me. But I’m not entirely sure that’s still true anymore. Something seems to have shifted in me this year, and I find myself almost craving the chilly water. I’ve started to enjoy the bracing sting of it as I pick my way carefully down the slippery shingle beach and wade in, shivering and cursing the cold as it creeps up my body. It feels awful until it feels great, but even when it feels awful, the cold seems to sear away all thoughts of the rest of the world, leaving just you and the water that surrounds you. It’s…elemental, I suppose. It’s clarifying.

And that brings me back around to the cold English Channel and my plan to swim across it. Here’s the thing: every time I go to the beach to swim here, I’m swimming in the Channel. There are lots of solo and relay Channel swimmers here in Brighton, and one of them happens to be a Seabirds coach, Christine, who regularly puts together relay teams. This summer, some of the other Seabirds coaches started joking(?) with me about when I was going to join a team. I kept laughing it off because, come on, it’s the English Channel and, as we have established, I am not an athlete. Buuuut…the more often I’ve looked out at that expanse of water on my doorstep, the more I’ve wondered what it would be like to take it on. I know I don’t have it in me to run a marathon, for example, but this year I started thinking that maybe I do have it in me to tackle a challenging swim. And once the thought got into my head that crossing the Channel as part of team was maybe not a totally unrealistic goal, I couldn’t let the idea go again.

So last month, during a lesson in the pool, Christine asked me if I also enjoyed swimming in the sea, and I said yes, and then she asked me if I wanted to join a relay team for August 2025, and I said OMG, OMG, I don’t know, I don’t think I can do it, I don’t know, OMG. And then I said yes.

Now, of course, I’m utterly terrified. I really don’t know if I can do it, but I know I have to believe I can do it or else I really won’t be able to do it. What I absolutely do know is that I would regret it forever if I didn’t at least try, because I would be left always wondering whether it would have been possible after all. I also know that an opportunity has been presented to me, and if I don’t seize it now, it might not come around again. Right now I have the motivation, the means, the time, the ability, and the will. Who knows if the stars will ever align like that again? It makes no sense to put off the challenge “just” because I’m scared, because I will always be scared. Fear is definitely a big obstacle here, but I have to trust that it’s not an insurmountable one. Time will tell.

Time is now also ticking down. The scheduled date for my team’s crossing is August 15, 2025, but the potential swim window is wider than that depending on the weather and other factors. In some ways, August seems like a million years away, but when I think of how much training I need to do between now and then, it doesn’t seem that far away at all. So I’m swimming every chance I get.

I’ve also signed up to a few swim challenges to give me an extra boost of motivation. One of them is the Swim 10k Challenge for Cancer Research UK, which involves swimming 10k over the course of November. This is the second time I’ve participated in a Cancer Research UK event but the first time I’ve ever tried to do any proper fundraising, so I was wasn’t sure how it would go. As it turns out, it’s been going very well, and I’m surprised and very touched by how generous people have been. If anyone would like to donate to my fundraising page, it would be much appreciated.

The support is encouraging me to keep going, and it feels good to be swimming for a good cause. I’m already halfway to 10k after a week and a half of swimming, which is another thing I couldn’t have imagined just a few months ago. Right now I can’t really imagine jumping off a boat in the middle of the English Channel and starting to swim, but I hope that when the time comes around, it will seem like a reasonable and achievable thing to do.

Well, achievable anyway. Reasonable is probably a matter of debate!