Oops I did it again.
Having swum the English Channel in 2004, I went back and swum it again in August 2008. I’m not sure why. Do I have to explain myself? All I can say is that I just felt like I had to!
I didn’t tell many people beforehand (even my parents only found out just before I swam). I’d been training anyway, for something else (which didn’t end up happening), so I booked a Channel slot as a “just in case” or maybe an “as well as”. Sometimes I like surprises.
That's a biggun!
On an almost perfect day, I set off at 2:15am and swam for around three hours in the pitch dark before marine twilight started to light the sky. With my husband and two Channel swimming friends and training partners on board my pilot boat, I swam for a total of 14 hours 27 minutes before standing (and promptly falling over!) on the sandy beach at Wissant. It wasn’t too far from where I landed the first time, actually, although I’d covered more ground because I swam on a Spring tide this time (as opposed to a neap).
I saw: jellyfish, big tankers, bizarre swathes of seaweed, seagulls, ferries.
I did not see: sewage, sharks, David Walliams, goose-fat, fish.
The swim made me the 83rd person to swim the English Channel twice. Boom!
The Fit Writer Nicola Joyce 
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