Above: A small group of swimmers from Sudbury & District Swimming Club, West Suffolk Masters Swimming Club and Hoffy's "Virtual Channel Swim Team", assemble prior to each team swimming 1,344 lengths of Culford School's 25 Metre Pool.As a means of raising additional funds for CLIC Sargent and St. Nicholas' Hospice, a group of swimmers assembled at Culford School the day after I completed my longest swim to date, and with shoulders still aching badly, and neck and shoulder raw from the previous day's adventures in the sea (see picture below).
Above: Shoulders and neck raw from 3.5 hours of pounding in Dover Harbour the day before the Virtual Channel Swim.
The idea was very simple. The English Channl is 21 miles across in a straight line. That equates to 1,344 lengths of a 25 Metre swimming pool. With six lanes between the three teams, we took two lanes each, and at 12.30pm we started to swim. At all times there was someone in each team swimming. We swam until we had swum 1,344 lengths per team. My team consisted of myself, Nick Amor, a solicitor at Gross & Co Solicitors, Glyn Hammond and Sean MacKenzie who swim with me in the mornings at Culford School, Mike Read who has swum the English Channel 33 times, Tom Gunning who swum the channel for 7 hours in 2006 before having to give up due to severe weather conditions, and two of Mike's friends Chris Berry and Gareth. I would like to thank you all personally for swimming. We all finished by 5pm and I think everyone enjoyed their day.
Above (left to right): Hoffy, Tom Gunning and Mike Read celebrate completing 1,344 lenths of Culford School pool.
I would like to personally thank the following people for all the effort they made to get the event up and running:-
Above: Shoulders and neck raw from 3.5 hours of pounding in Dover Harbour the day before the Virtual Channel Swim.The idea was very simple. The English Channl is 21 miles across in a straight line. That equates to 1,344 lengths of a 25 Metre swimming pool. With six lanes between the three teams, we took two lanes each, and at 12.30pm we started to swim. At all times there was someone in each team swimming. We swam until we had swum 1,344 lengths per team. My team consisted of myself, Nick Amor, a solicitor at Gross & Co Solicitors, Glyn Hammond and Sean MacKenzie who swim with me in the mornings at Culford School, Mike Read who has swum the English Channel 33 times, Tom Gunning who swum the channel for 7 hours in 2006 before having to give up due to severe weather conditions, and two of Mike's friends Chris Berry and Gareth. I would like to thank you all personally for swimming. We all finished by 5pm and I think everyone enjoyed their day.
Above (left to right): Hoffy, Tom Gunning and Mike Read celebrate completing 1,344 lenths of Culford School pool.I would like to personally thank the following people for all the effort they made to get the event up and running:-
- Karen Roberts at CLIC Sargent
- Gail Cornish at St. Nicholas' Hospice
- Barry Peters at The Bury Free Press for his help advertising the event
- Sara Gentry at West Suffolk Swimming Club for getting the West Suffolk Masters to compete and help with the Counting.
- Carl Cooper of Sudbury Swimming Club (a former channel swimmer) who brought his team across and made the day what it was.
- Gudrun Collins of GeeCol Wellness Studio for massaging all the aching limbs between swims.
- Mark Grubb of Med and Mind for providing the Electro-Magnetic Treatment between swims
- Chris Licence at Culford School Sports Centre for giving us the pool free of charge to help us raise money for the charities.
There are two more clubs, Mildenhall and Stowmarket who are doing the swim in their own pools in June. Good luck to you all, and once I have an update with all the funds raised, I will post it here with all the photos.
Thank you eveyone for supporting this event, including my wife Beccy and my son Sebastian, who constantly give up their weekends to help me achieve my dream of swimming the English Channel.
Hoffy.
Web: www.HoffysChannelSwim.org.uk
E-mail: paul@hoffyschannelswim.org.uk
