I didn't start swimming seriously till 30, have short arms and legs, small feet and hands, bad technique and no competitive instinct. And yet, over several years, I trained myself to undertake the toughest of swimming tests
To see me walking down the street you wouldn't give me a second glance. If you did look my way, you'd just see a short, tubby middle-aged woman. Nothing remarkable. Not tall or athletic. Definitely not amazonian or sporty-looking.
You definitely wouldn't imagine I had swum the English Channel solo. But that's just what I did. I swam for 18 hours and 52 minutes, non-stop, landing bedraggled and exhausted on a remote French beach, at the bottom of a cliff, at three o'clock in the morning. I was about the 280th woman in history to swim the 21 miles solo across the stretch of water. Fewer people have swum the Channel than have summited Everest.
If you'd told my younger self that I'd one day swim the Channel I'd have thought the idea ridiculous.
I moved to London when I was 30. As far as sport was concerned I was a bit of a recreational runner. I ran a few times a week, and had done a few 10ks for fun. London seemed grimy and slightly unfriendly. Suddenly running seemed less attractive a hobby than it had been in rural England.
But I lived round the corner from Kings Hall baths in Hackney, so I decided to start swimming as a way of keeping fit. I'd always "gone swimming" since childhood, but that meant the same as it did for most people – going to the pool and swimming 20 lengths and thinking that was exercise.
At Kings Hall pool, I decided to see how much I could swim non-stop. First it was two lengths before I had to stop for a rest. I built it up to four, then eight, then 20, then 30 lengths. After a year or so of swimming up and down on my own, the coach of a local swimming club suggested I join their session. Not because I was any good – I wasn't talent-spotted or anything – but I think he must have seen some spark of determination in me that deserved nurturing. The club was fun and relaxed: he blasted music from a big ghetto-blaster on the pool deck and made us swim in time to the rhythm of the music. I got a little better. A year later I joined my first serious masters' swimming club.
I'd like to say that it was like the movies – that with Eye of the Tiger playing as a musical backdrop, crack-of-dawn workouts under a tough but fair coach and hard work and dedication I gradually became brilliant. But truthfully, I was always distinctly average as a swimmer. I have short arms and legs, small feet and hands, bad technique and no competitive instinct to race. While my clubmates went eagerly off to compete in galas and win medals I was always an also-ran. I was an average Joe – better than your ordinary public swimmer but in the middle of the middle lane in the aptitude stakes.
I enjoyed my club swimming though – being part of a team, a group; sharing pain in the pool. Training was generally fun as well as hard work. I was quite fit and contented with plodding along. But one day, chatting to a fellow swimmer, I heard of a company that was offering swimming adventure holidays. I decided that I'd give them a go. I'd never properly swum in the sea before and was anxious about all it would entail. Little did I know at that point how my life would change.
I loved the holiday – swimming between islands in Greece, two, three and 4km at a time. It was challenging and frightening and rewarding all at once. The people I met were supportive and friendly – some were veteran open-water swimmers and some were new to it like me. And the hunky swimmers who ran the holiday were heroic English Channel solo swimmers who regaled us with tales of adventure and bravery. Nobody cared about racing and winning; it was all about going the distance. By the end of the holiday I wanted more.
I came home and enrolled in several short open-water swims along the south coast of England. My eyes were open to a new group of people – they drove to the coast at weekends and swam in the sea and laughed and drank tea out of polystyrene cups at the ends of races to get warm.
The first year I swam 2km races and 3km races and it was fun. The following year I decided to tackle some longer distances. I joined the British Long Distance Swimming Association – a bunch of slightly odd, but friendly, hardy and no-nonsense long-distance swimmers. I ramped up my pool training. I competed in longer races. Six miles in a very cold lake in Wales, and several moderately long lakes in the Lake District. That year culminated in me swimming the length of Lake Windermere, my longest and toughest race to date: 10 miles non-stop in cold water.
At that point I didn't want to swim the English Channel, although people kept asking me when I was going to. Sitting on the tube one day soon after returning from Windermere I decided I was going to give it a go – and promptly burst into tears with the fear and dread. I phoned my mom to tell her that I'd decided to swim the Channel. She just said calmly, "We were wondering when you were going to do it." Everyone knew apart from me.
Two more years of intense and gruelling training followed. This time it was more like a scene from the movie Rocky. In the winter I trained in the pool five times a week, two hours at a time. I ran to the pool to be there to start swim training at 6am. I swam in an unheated lido throughout the winter to build up tolerance to cold water and travelled to Finland to take part in the World Ice Swimming Championships. That was the fun bit.
In the summer months I gave up most of the pool training and spent all weekend in the sea in Dover with other long-distance swimmers. Up to eight hours at a time slogging round and round Dover harbour, sometimes crying into my goggles with the misery and boredom and fatigue. Desperate to get out of the water but knowing that it wasn't an option. Getting sunburnt and being stung by jellyfish and smearing myself in Vaseline to stop the inevitable chafing of swimming costumes in the sea. Falling asleep at my desk at work on Monday mornings after a weekend of doing nothing but swimming. Obsessing about the big swim – such a frightening thing that I couldn't even contemplate looking across the stretch of water to France to see just how far it was. As the tragic death of Susan Taylor while swimming the Channel has recently shown, this is not a task to be undertaken lightly, even by experienced swimmers.
In the summer of 2005 I swam for 21 hours and two minutes but failed to get to France. I spent another year training even more intensively than I had before. Longer and longer swims. Harder and harder training. Finally, on the 22 July 2006, I landed on Cap Blanc Nez after my second attempt – 18 hours and 52 minutes after I started.
Swimming the Channel is not about being fast and smooth and beautiful as a swimmer, although that can certainly help. Swimming the Channel is about being single-minded and self-contained and driven and stubborn. It's about facing head-on every mental weakness that you have. It's without a doubt the best thing I have ever done in my life. Not bad for a middle-lane swimmer.
Channel swimming in stats
The shortest route across the Channel is from Dover, England, to Cap Gris Nez in France – more or less 21 miles as the crow flies
The first crossing: Captain Matthew Webb in 21 hours 45 minutes on 24 August 1875
The first female crossing: Gertrude Ederle of the USA on 6 August 1926
The most ever crossings: Alison Streeter MBE ("Queen of the Channel"), UK, with 46 crossings
The youngest ever swimmer: Thomas Gregory, 11 years 11 months, in 11 hours 54 minutes (a minimum age limit of 16 is now enforced)
The oldest swimmer: Roger Allsopp of Guernsey, 70 years 147 days, in 17 hours 51 minutes.
Fastest ever one-way solo swim: Trent Grimsey of Australia in six hours 55 minutes
Longest ever one-way solo swim: Jackie Cobell of the UK in 28 hours 44 minutes
A total of 1341 swimmers have completed a total of 1801 solo swims
Average solo crossing time: 13 hours 24 minutes
Fatalities: There have been eight fatalities in the history of Channel swimming since 1845
• For more information on how to become a Channel swimmer, visit the Channel Swimming and Piloting Federation website.
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