My longest swim yet! 

I first thought I wanted to swim the Channel aged 10 when I saw an Esther Williams film, I never really thought I’d do it !!I was in Lisburn Swim club for a very short time, but didn’t like competition!  I did enjoy life saving though, and trained at Queens until they threw me out of the class and made me start teaching!I did my first ildsa race in 2005, the next year, some Channel swimmers encouraged me to aim for the Channel myself, and so I tested myself with a 10 ½mile swim in Lough Erne.  2007 saw a 17mile swim in Winderemere, and 2008 was the Rathlin swim (very cold). 

A year of hard training later and ready for the “Big one!” 

After about 8 hours of swimming, I began to get fed up, asking myself “why?”…but my team just told me to get on with it, I was swimming well… I went through stages of thinking “yes, I can do this…” and “no, I can’t!”  in the end it was Can Do that won. 

When I walked out of the water onto Weston Beach, I could hardly believe it, a childhood dream realised! My thanks to everyone who has helped and supported me throughout…

And my team, including my husband, Brian who has walked the beach all winter on my training swims…Sara, my masseur, who kept me injury free all year …And Paul, my Photographer and support swimmer, who got in when I was slacking and made me pick up the pace again! None of them were going to let me back on that boat until I reached France! 

I couldn’t have done it without you…