strewth

here is the map of my swim. golly.

Mt Rainer

Today I got an e-mail from a colleague from our New York office who wants to reattempt climbing Mount Rainer next year, which I believe is the highest mountain in Northern America (after hearing about my channel swim). He asked if I'd be up for joining him. At higher than K2, now that would be a curious challenge. Worth mulling over maybe. Haha, but maybe I will.

Photos

As promised, a vast array of photos. Fill you're boots!

Josephes

I blog today from the comfort of my tent in Prutz, Austria.

Here I am kayaking and recovering from my swim, getting my thoughts into perspective, and trying to work out what the next great adventure for me will be.

Its great here. Water levels are sweet, not too high, not too low, company (Harry "the gimp" Jones and James "Pie" Wardle, amongst others from the UK paddling fraternity) is freat as always in these kayak hotspots.

So far I've not paddled a lot. We are having difficulty hitching lifts to do the shuttle, which limits our paddling to one or two rivers a day, but you can't knock the beauty of these Austrian valleys, with the Giarson gorge (and the famous "Garden of the Inn gorge") a particular highlight. Sheer, unadulterated beauty. I don't know a huge amount about life from a kayakers perspective, it being just a hobby of mine, but I do know its unique and special. Very few people get to see the world from this point of view.


Tomorrow we leave Prutz and head to the Crazy Eddies campsite in Heyming, which is in the Oetz valley, Now that we've done some nice grade 4 warmups its time to move onto the 4+/5 rivers and really start testing our paddling again...it takes a few days to get back in to it since, living in London, I just get rusty!

All thats left to say is that Jospehes, the familiar pizzeria in Prutz, has not been credit crunched, and still serves excellent pizzas, and that the fabled Josephe (N.B. this is confirmed as NOT actually his name) recognises us from when we were here two years ago.

Its amazing how wild a night you can have in a town the size of Prutz, with essentially just one grungy bar!

Pictures of this and my swim to follow soon. Perhaps even a video or two.

Post-swim blogging

So finally I've done it, attemted (and failed) to swim the English Channel. Although failure is potentially a bit too strong.

I swam to within 3 miles of the French coast, where me and a collection of 6 other swimmers were met with a freak random tide, which forced us back out to sea, At this point I had one and a half hours swimming time left to the shore. I swam on for another three hours and didn't move an inch (well, I moved sideways). I'll post the map up here when I can, with some pictures. The facts remain below:

- I swam for 13 hours and 45 minutes, from 5am to 6.45pm.
- I swam 24 miles
- On that day, my projected swim should have been 22 miles but for the freak tide
- 9 swimmers set out
- 3 relay swimmers got to France, no solo swimmers did. two gave up in the first three hours.
- Th fastest swimmer got to within half a mile of the French coast (15 minutes swimming), and had to turn back because of the tide.

All in all, I'm proud of my achievement, in actual fact I swam further than the channel. The bitter fact is, though, that I didn't swim the channel. Regardless I will hold my head high. I did something extraordinary, and mind boggling, that is a long time swimming. It doesn't make me special, and ultimately I failed, but it wasn't my fault and I could have carried on forever - I was forced out of the water by my pilot because success at that point had become impossible.

I'll always look back on my swim with a tinge of frustration and emptiness - for all the physical strength that it has proved, it wasn't a channel crossing, and that victory will only ever be conclusively in my head. I think I'll have to go back one day and try again. With Eric Hartley and my mum and dad, who never left the side of the boat in all that time (although mum will have to admit to partial sea sickness).

Also on board were my erstwhile companions Harry and Max, of paddling fame, and Millsey, who is an inspirational figure anyway for all he's achieved in his life.

One day I'll write in more detail about how it feels to cross the channel through swim. This has been quite an adventure, and whilst I don't have closure one it, and am left with that terrible frustration, I have proved something, I'm not sure what - in actualy fact I didn't find the ordeal too difficult, although my shoulders will argue otherwise.

I'm not Ranulph Fienes or James Cracknell, or Scott and Amundsen. But I know now that I can do some great things, and that I can't stop at the channel. I'll do it again one day, but only to close off a box I already know now that I can tick. Maybe I'll do a 2-way crossing - for some reason just one way doesn't seem a challenge enough any more.

Crossing the channel is not racing across the Atlantic or doing transglobal expeditions. For me, though, it will do just fine!

Denial

We chugged out to sea at 2am this morning with the hope of being able to start the swim, but the conditions were just too bad - big waves and pitch black = not good bedfellows.

Nonetheless we must press on - looks like Thursday is the next best day, so toes crossed for that. In the mean time I'm on call. Like a doctor. Or a prostitute.

Final Thoughts (part two)

If you are on here looking for updates from my swim then check out www.twitter.com/dankipswim. Videos are being posted around too..

This morning I got the call from Eric the pilot saying its almost definitely happening this evening. Which is a bit crazy...waiting for the final definitve go ahead, which I'm expecting in half an hour. Blimey. I've mainly been eating spaghetti.

Yesterday I went down to Dover for one last swim (one and a half hours). It was fine, and probably just what I needed, but on the way back we stopped off at Samphire Hoe, which is the beach that I set off from. This was the first time that I have stopped and looked at the channel since I agreed to do this. And probably something I should have done beforehand, although with hindsight it is good that I didn't because there is no way that I would have agreed to do it.

The one thing that struck me, and struck me hard in a kind of breathtaking kind of way, was the sheer vastness of it. You can just about make out France, and that is fine. But its the vast stretch between the Atlantic and the North Sea thats the problem. Just a great big maassive body of water...that I need to try to swim across, in a couple of hours.

Probably best not to dwell on that for too long actually...I'm sure it will be a pretty unforgettable sunset.


Much more constructive is to leave with this quote, which I think is appropriate, from a great man and adventurer, and generally quite deep and philosophical - but I guess thats probably the best thing to be now...a bit philospophical:

"The sea's only gifts are harsh blows, and occasionally the chance to feel strong. Now I don't know much about the sea, but I do know that that's the way it is here. And I also know how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong but to feel strong. To measure yourself at least once. To find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions. Facing the blind death stone alone, with nothing to help you but your hands and your own head."

See you on the other side.