Welcome to Dover

The White Cliffs of Dover

April 30^th, England, not the time or place you would want to be gettng into the sea, however this is what about 20 of us were about to do for the start of the Dover training season. It was a much smaller turn out then expected, which we suspected had something to do with a massive over-the-top show of wealth/wedding the day before. The water temperature was 11c, the same as Folkestone last November, and 3c colder than Gozo, which had felt cold enough.

It was good to see everybody again, even though it had only been about 3 weeks, it’s always nice to see people in a similar situation to yourself. There’s a limit to how much you can talk about swimming to all your other friends. I find I bore myself quite a lot talking about it, so I can only imagine what they are thinking when I start talking about knocking 30 seconds off my time for a mile.

Hannah had picked me and Simon up for the drive down which was very handy, and much better than turning up on your own. We misjudged quite how quickly we were going to get there and ended up being the first ones to arrive, apart from the excellent volunteers who sort out all the paperwork and generally help out more than could be asked for really. There was also one other man who was training for the Irish Channel who was already in the sea and would stay there for 3 hours.

I had completed 3 weeks training on Vlads programmes and was faster than I had ever been before, literally after just these few weeks of following his programme. I had swum about 77km and was setting new p.b.’s every time I visited the pool. Simon admitted to having only swam about 10km in the same time so I knew I was putting in enough effort for now, he has the advantage of swimming incredibly well though, but I was getting there.

Dover Harbour at the bottom, Cap Gris Nez at the top, looks easy

Freda called us all round and told us where we were allowed to swim and where we weren’t, and how long we were going to be swimming for, just 30 minutes to start off with. This was expected as I was told sometimes that they start off with as little as 10 minutes because of the cold, but the water was a bit warmer this year. We kitted up, got our red caps on and jumped in to experience Dover for the first time of the year, or the first time ever!

Shockingly it was not too bad at all, in fact it felt almost warm. It was pretty choppy though, as we swam towards the iron wall the waves were crashing against it and the bottom of the sea was so churned up you couldn’t see your hands at all. I was pleased to pretty much stay with Simon the whole way, keeping up a reasonable pace. The 30 minutes flew by and in no time at all we were out. Despite not feeling that cold I continued my tradition of shivering like a mad man for a good half an hour, it was quite annoying but it could be worse.

We had about an hours break then we were back in again for 40 minutes ‘Double-dipping’. It is so much worse getting back in, then getting in in the first place, but again it was just a case of jumping in and wind-milling away as quickly as possible until I felt comfortable. Again I stayed with Simon and again the time went by very quickly, I did feel the cold a bit more this time. My little finger on my right hand appears to be my weak point as it was just flapping around like a useless piece of skin, I may have to start immersing it in ice to teach it a lesson. Also I randomly had a nose bleed. So in short despite feeling fine I was shivering, bleeding and had lost the use of one of my fingers, I dread to think how I’ll look when I feel bad.

The next day was more of the same. More people turned up and this time the swims were 45 minutes followed by an hour. Shamefully I only completed the first swim as I was meant to be on a rest day and decided I could give myself a swim off, it really wasn’t worth the mocking abuse though so it won’t happen again. Nick Adams being the major attacker, looking back it was fully deserved.

It had been an excellent first weekend in Dover. I was definitely not feeling out of my depth as I had in Australia, the pool sessions were paying off and I had a much more positive outlook for the first time in a while…