I swam from Penarth to Clevedon on 5 September in 6 hours and 7 minutes, my second channel swim in the UK.

Motivation

I felt so bad in my English Channel swim. It was well beyond my ability at that time. I didn’t think of anything else and was hoping to get better in competitive swimming first, as good channel swimmers are all high level competitive swimmers. However, I started getting jealous seeing my friends swim more channels, like Wen Hsu completing her Triple Crown and aiming for the Ocean 7, Edie Hu swimming the Öresund Strait, and Ryan Leung becoming the first Hongkonger to swim the North Channel, starting his channel career with the hardest swim. Therefore I started to think about swimming a channel to broaden my portfolio as well.

As a matter of principle, I don’t really have interest in channel swims which involve extensive travelling, especially those requiring flying, and my main interest is in local swims and significant geographical swims. Therefore, as a UK resident, I looked for local UK challenges. The most significant challenge is, of course, the English Channel, the Mecca which I have already done and have currently no interest in doing that again, unless I become a much better swimmer. The second one is the North Channel, which separates Scotland and Northern Ireland. It is a very difficult swim which is definitely out of my ability, with the cold water, jellyfish and the extremely strong current funneling through the channel all part of the challenge. The remaining one is the Bristol Channel, which separates England and Wales, well known for its extreme tidal range and brown water. There are numerous established routes, from the inner routes in the Severn Estuary to the outer routes near the edge of the open ocean. The inner routes are only less than half of the English Channel in width, with the typical southern temperature, so I think the Bristol Channel may be a challenge suitable for my ability.

I am only interested in short routes in channel swims, so I initially enquired about the shortest established route, Penarth to Weston-super-Mare, which is only 13 km in a straight line. However, I was told that it is a difficult swim due to tricky currents and I was suggested to consider Penarth to Clevedon. Penarth to Clevedon is slightly longer in a straight line but it is basically tidal assisted in the second half, with the incoming tide pushing me to shore. I thought about it for a while, fighting my inner daemon whether to settle for a slightly longer route or keep myself dry until I am fast enough to swim the tricky short route. I eventually couldn’t resist the temptation to “make some progress”, even if the route would not be the shortest one, and made the booking.

I initially booked for 15 to 18 September, however, it turned out that the OpenTripPlanner conference was held on the exact same dates and I couldn’t afford to miss it for my career (my work was on the largest known deployment of OpenTripPlanner in the world, and now I am an active contributor and a member of the review team), so I changed to the preceding tide, 1 to 4 September.

Training

To be honest, this year was probably the worst since I started marathon swimming in terms of training. I was so tired of it having no improvement year over year and no swim club having competitive open water squads for adults in London, and little support from my current swim club for my nationals.

I had become much slower compared to 2 years ago, when I could keep my 2-minute 100 m intervals returning under 1:40 for 30 x 100 m. This year I couldn’t even do 1:50 for 100 m on 2:10. As such, I had completely lost my motivation and swam little apart from the club training sessions, and in the sea when the weather was good. And even in the sea, I had never swum more than 3 hours on a single day, although I did have a few big weekends when the weather forecast was really good tempting me to get in again, and my focus was just to keep a consistent speed and not to let my form deteriorate.

During the season, I did a few swim events, starting from 5 km up to 10 km to gradually get used to the distance, but when I did the 10 km Dock2Dock this year, my performance deterioration remained a concern.

Dovercoaster

Unfortunately the weather forecast during my tidal period was bad. At the end of August, the pilot suggested that there might be a small chance to go on 2 September, however I was in slot 2 and any chance would be the slot 1 swimmer first. As the forecast was consistently bad, I was expecting that the swim wouldn’t happen and we would have to wait until the backup a month later.

Meanwhile, I also got in contact with Hildi Mitchell, who is also an English Channel swimmer waiting to swim the Bristol Channel on the same tide as me, but on the middle route (Glenthorne to Porthcawl) instead. She was already staying in Wales with her crew, while I was so stressed getting everything ready in my new job just started.

Then, on Monday, I got a call from the pilot again saying that there might be a chance on Friday 5 September. A window opened in the forecast. On Wednesday the forecast became clear that Friday was swimmable and I would have a go, the same for Hildi as well.

I was having trouble finding crew members on this tide because it was the beginning of the school term. My English Channel team members who live in that area are not available. However, the pilot said it wouldn’t be a problem because the support boat is a small RIB, and the boat crew could help me with the feeds, so having fewer people would be better.

So all problems were sorted. I immediately put in my leave for Thursday and Friday (my company already expected that I planned some leave in the week) and started booking travel arrangements.

Travel

The meeting time and place was 09:15 Friday at Penarth Marina. It was possible for me to travel from home in the morning using a high speed train from London to Cardiff (departing London Paddington at 06:48), but that would require an expensive Anytime ticket as an Off-Peak ticket isn’t valid at that time, and I would have to wake up early. I would still need the leave day on Thursday to give each time to pack my stuff as well so it wouldn’t give any advantage compared to getting there on Thursday on the cheapest transport and a night of accommodation. I booked a National Express coach from London Victoria to Newport for just £12.90, one day in advance, then tapped in with my contactless card at the rail station to travel to Dingle Road, for just £2.70 with the new South Wales PAYG system (compared to £7.80 with a traditional ticket).

My accommodation is a B&B on Windsor Road just outside the station, about 15-minute walk to the marina. After getting there, I went to the supermarket to buy some essentials, including some food for breakfast, a bottle of water for feeds, and a bottle of Coca-Cola just in case I want it. Afterwards I bought some Chinese takeaway for dinner and went to bed afterwards.

The big day

I didn’t post much about this swim on social media until the very last week, when I made a group post asking for a crew. People then got interested in what I was swimming and asked how far it was. I didn’t even think about it and, once I opened the map to measure, I was shocked that the distance between Penarth and Clevedon was 21 km, rather than 16 km as in my mind (I was mentally prepared to do a 16 km swim with some tide assistance in about 6 hours – possibly because I had already converted the distance when I made my research).

Anyway, I was determined to swim to England, and I expected it to be a 6-hour swim. However, a 6-hour swim, although much less than my big challenges in the past, was still substantially longer than the races I did this year, with the longest one only 3:45 which I was totally done with, and even the 7.5 km national championship was very tough for me. Although a channel swim isn’t a race, the timing is still critical for such a tide-dependent swim, that I must get my effort right for the optimal result, getting good progress in the first half while not getting burned out in the second half.

My swim started at about 10:20 and the low tide was 13:00, when I would round Flat Holm and the tide would turn and push me into the English shore. Therefore my feeding schedule was every 1.5 hours for the first two feeds before the tide turned, and every hour afterwards so I could stay strong while flying through the incoming tide.

The first feed always seemed like forever. Also the direction of the sun seemed so strange to me. Not long before the second feed, I rounded Flat Holm, which was about the half way of the swim. The feeds became more frequent afterwards as I switched from every 1.5 hours to every hour.

I started to get impatient at the third feed despite it being only 4 hours, because I had already gone over Weston-super-Mare on my right but I was not swimming into shore, but parallel to it instead. Then the fourth feed came. I started to see Clevedon on the front left but it was still very far away, and I was not heading in the direction to shore yet. I was still very impatient thinking how long it would take for the tide to bring me there, as I was only expecting a 6-hour swim.

Then, the pilot boat guided me to the direction to shore. Not long afterwards, I saw the shore was really close, but Clevedon was still on the left with some distance. Then I got another feed before the hour was up (45 minutes actually) and was told to push for the finish. All of a sudden, Clevedon Pier appeared in sight. Then I saw the slipway as well. I aimed at it and hit it perfectly, walked up the slipway for a clean landing.

I completed my Bristol Channel swim and I returned to the pilot boat to get back to Penarth. My shoulder was a bit tired but I could still keep a consistent effort, unlike my previous long swims where the ending was a complete struggle.

Afterwards, I took a high-speed train from Cardiff back to London and went home.

What’s next

I haven’t decided yet. I am interested in a few channels at this moment. In particular, I want to swim the Bristol Channel again on another shorter route, maybe Penarth to Weston-super-Mare, or, if feasible, a route which is more upstream into the Severn Estuary such as Goldcliff to Portishead, or even Sudbrook to Severn Beach, as long as it hasn’t been done before. Elsewhere, as I have swum the English Channel and the Bristol Channel, the next natural progression will be the North Channel, but it will be very hard and I doubt if I can do it.

However, I am not even sure if I will continue swimming or not, because of the reasons I mentioned in the beginning of this article. I am not seeing a pathway to become a good swimmer due to the lack of opportunities in London’s swim clubs. I also have interest in some other things like orienteering, triathlon and board games, and for triathlon, swim training is useless for me because my bike performance is holding me back and the time gained by swim training is insignificant when compared to the length of the bike leg in a standard distance triathlon, and I may want to get good in one of these things as well as, or instead of, swimming.