Katie Hope - Channel Swimmer

Katie swam the English Channel on 21st July 2006 in 13 hours 37 minutes. Here is her story in her own words:

The Swim

"Haven't you heard they do ferries now?"

It's a pretty typical question when you tell people you're going to swim the channel, then lots of other classics like "Do you have breaks on the boat," "Will you be wearing a wetsuit" and "ooh what about sharks.."

And a classic male question; "Will you have to smother yourself in whale fat?". But mainly people want to know: "Why?"

For me I think I can lay the blame on King of the Channel Kevin Murphy's shoulders. I met him at Uxbridge lido and he told me I could swim the channel one day.

The idea was planted and then when three swimmers from my club all swam the channel, I was inspired. I booked to swim the channel in August 2004 and turned up at the harbour, bag of melted mini rolls in hand, ( the channel swimmer's food of choice I'd been told!) to start training.

But, cruelly, it wasn't to be. The tide I was due to swim on was wiped out due to high winds. I waited another two tides and like many people that summer, ended up training until late September but never got the chance to swim.

Because quite a few of the people I had trained with that summer also didn't get a chance to swim that year, it made it an easier decision to come back for one more summer in 2005 and train again.

And having done it all before made the training so much easier. I was amazed at how well I seemed to cope with the cold and genuinely couldn't wait for my chance to finally get out in the channel. Unexpectedly, I went before my tide actually started on a spring tide but the weather unfortunately wasn't ideal.

The first swim...

After 12 hours my crew felt my reactions had become very slow, and made the difficult decision to get me out of the water. At the time I felt pretty furious - it seemed so cruel to pluck me out of the water when I could see France and only had about 3 miles left to swim.

But when they got me on board my fury turned to alarm as when I breathed in there was a gurgling sound.

It turned out that I'd got salt water on my lungs. I ended up in hospital overnight on oxygen. The doctor explained that the water on my lungs had meant oxygen wasn't circulating round my body efficiently and as my whirring limbs were demanding more of it, less oxygen was getting to my brain which explained the slow reactions.

I was very lucky to have a crew that was so observant and had managed to spot the signs and get me out before anything worse had happened. And despite my original fury when I look back on that swim it's clear I wasn't thinking straight.

As I remember the swim it was like looking at my surroundings through a telescope.

My vision seemed to get narrower and narrower, and everything was a kind of sludgy brown colour and although I felt tired, all I could think of was keeping swimming.

It was kind of desperate and I felt the crew and boat were almost completely irrelevant to me, an irritating presence that I wanted to go away so I could get on with the important job of swimming the channel! In hindsight I could have prevented some of this by maintaining much better communication with the boat. As the conditions weren't ideal I thought the best thing was to just keep my head down and swim, but I think this just made me retreat – dangerously – into my own mind.

Although I felt weak and breathless for the next week, I just couldn't sleep. I stayed awake plotting how I could get back into the Channel before the end of the season, thinking I had to have my chance again and that the ending just wasn't right. Everyone asked me whether I was really ready to get back in there and secretly I had doubts that I wasn't but, just couldn't conceive of not getting back in. After all the work and preparation I just felt I had to go again.

Back so soon?

Luckily my pilot Neil kindly managed to squeeze me in again and just under 3 weeks later I set out to swim the channel again, feeling sure I had to make it this time. The sun was shining, I had great conditions, a very experienced crew and everything seemed meant to be. But in hindsight I just wasn't ready to go for it again.

Driving down the night before I felt relief that one way or another it would soon all be over with. That is just not the right attitude to swim the channel. You have to want to be there, to want to do battle, and I just wanted to get in and tick the box to say I'd done it. I just wasn't mentally ready to do the swim again so soon. Right from the beginning of the swim even though I had great sunshine and weather I just didn't enjoy it and it seemed incredibly long. At 9 hours I said very vehemently that I was sick of swimming.

At 15 hours - and just 0.7 of a mile from the lighthouse - my whole crew was shouting at me to tell me how close I was and how France was right there. But I was just exhausted I had forgotten why I was swimming and where to.

Although I saw the lighthouse, it meant nothing to me as I assumed I'd missed the point (I didn't realise you could miss it and then be swept back towards it) and I clearly didn't have the focus to continue. I vaguely remember lying in the water with my arms and legs stretched out in a swimming-like motion but not actually swimming. Cliff, one of my crew, got in to see how I was and made the decision I wasn't fit to continue.

Unlike the first time I felt complete and utter relief.

Later I realised that mentally, probably a lot more than physically, I just wasn't ready to get back in. The channel is above all a mental challenge and it's not over until it's over. You have to be prepared to swim for as long as it takes and that could be a lot longer than you ever realised.

I think these were the valuable lessons I took into my swim this summer. It took me a long time to decide whether to do it again. Apart from anything else the training takes up so much time and I was worried I'd strained the patience of friends and family to the maximum.

France here we come

So on 21st July I set off for my third attempt on the channel.

Familiarity helped this time, I knew the routine and was relieved to find I felt just as psyched up for it as I had for my first attempt. Fellow channel swimmer Steve Landells reminded me before hand that I'd go through different moods and to remember that bad moods would eventually pass just like the good ones and that it was all temporary.

I stayed in Dover the night of my swim on the basis I'd get more sleep that way. Even so I struggled to get up at 5am and the temptation to stay tucked up in bed and avoid the channel altogether was almost overwhelming!

I was too nervous to eat properly but forced down a chocolate croissant and a banana and drank a bottle of water.

At 6am I met the rest of my crew members: my mum and dad, at the boat. Originally I'd planned on having a larger support crew, but due to last minute changes it ended up being my boyfriend Steve and my parents. This meant I had no support swimmer which worried me slightly. But also on the boat were Simon the official observer, Chris my pilot and Tony, his co-pilot/crew. And I knew their knowledge and expertise from numerous crossings would give my crew a lot of support.

In the end having such a small crew worked really well as everyone knew their role and no one stood on anyone else's toes. My dad took charge of feeding, my mum of general communications and encouragement and making sure they didn't lose me and Steve did all the stuff like photos and texting family and friends.

From my water-based point of view it all seemed really calm and organised on the boat and noone seemed overly stressed or worried about anything which was reassuring. I didn't have a whiteboard for messages but when I stopped to feed they would tell me who had called and what they'd said. As I had my earplugs in I couldn't hear everything but it was really nice to think that so many people were thinking of me and literally willing me across.

The whole time I was swimming my mum stayed visible at the back of the boat and even though we couldn't actually communicate it was really reassuring to see her there each time I breathed. I could also see Chris the pilot who mostly drove the boat from the top of the boat. It was nice to have him watching over me and from that vantage point I also knew he was unlikely to run me over!

I didn't miss having a pace swimmer, but this may be partly because I tend to train by myself in the harbour and am used to swimming alone. I enjoyed having the water all to myself. It was my swim and it felt very special to have the chance to be out there in the middle of the sea with the tankers and liners going past. At one stage a small orange plane zoomed in to take a closer look and later a fisherman zoomed past and waved hello. It felt great to be the object of so much interest and curiosity.

My swim started around 7.30am when I ran into the sea whizzing off at a very unsustainable stroke rate of 77 stroke a minute The sun was shining and I felt happy and excited. But quite early on, at around 2hours I stared to feel pretty bad. The water seemed choppy and I was finding it really hard to keep my eyes open and to focus.

In hindsight I think i had slight seasickness, and was feeling dizzy. I was violently sick on my 3rd feed and felt much better. The next feed was just plain water and I felt fine. But then on the next feed I was very sick again.

This time I felt really panic stricken as I knew I couldn't swim the channel without nutrition.After all this work, sickness, something I felt I had no control over, could ruin the swim.

Luckily my crew on Chris the pilot's advice decided to stop giving me Maxim for a while and to give me mint tea instead. This is something I drink all the time at home, it soothes the stomach and rather usefully it also acted as a kind of mouthwash too and helped to remove the sea salt taste.

I was really lucky that my crew had bought enough mint tea, something I'd asked for as a change in drink rather than a constant feed, and that they were flexible and brave enough to completely change the original feeding plan. From then on they fed me every 45 minutes for a while - rather than every 30 minutes - and gave me plain mint tea with ginger biscuits to settle my stomach.

Although ginger biscuits take a while to eat in the sea they really tasted delicious in the water. Gradually they began to mix Maxim, a carbohydrate power, back into the tea, but only in small quantities. Although I could tell when it was Maxim, and when just plain tea I never felt sick again.

I also ate a lot more than I usually do when I'm swimming – having a mini roll, ginger biscuit or milky way at almost every feed for a while.

On one feed the mini roll ended up in the sea and I felt truly devastated.

I swam on assuming my crew would stop me in 5 minutes with another mini roll but they let me continue for the next 45 minutes while I spent all the time silently mourning my lost mini roll! In hindsight I should have just stopped and demanded one, but I was worried there was a reason they hadn't stopped me again and a sense of urgency and worry about making the tide kept me going.

From then on it was a matter of just keeping swimming. I felt lots of niggles early on, my left shoulder really hurt and then oddly my left wrist. But after the initial 3 hours or so they felt fine, so I think it might have just been psychological.

The sea also suddenly really calmed down to almost lake-like. It was as if someone had turned the choppiness off. I knew this was not guaranteed to last so tried to speed up a bit to make the most of it.

Fairly early on my crew told me I was half way.

Although it felt great to have made progress I knew half way didn't really mean that much and the second half of the swim was likely to be much longer and tougher. By the position of the sun I could also tell it was still fairly early and I knew that having started around 7.30amish I was unlikely to land much earlier than dusk.

But from then on every time I breathed to the left I could see France out of the corner of my eye.

At first I didn't believe it and kept trying to avoid looking as I knew that although it looked close it was still a long way off. I tried to breathe lower and when I still caught glimpses decided to pretend it was something else: a big tanker or a whale or something,anything but France! I also tried to pay more attention to the boat, try to see who was doing what and whether they were having fun. The other thing I thought of was telling people I'd made it and how they would react.

Originally I'd planned to keep my attempt quiet in case I didn't make it again. Sally, another channel swimmer making her second attempt the same day as me, told me how silly that seemed when everyone would find out anyway and how good it would be to have all those people willing me across. So the night before I texted all my friends to let them know I would be swimming tomorrow and asked them to send encouraging texts. They started arriving immediately and it was a real boost to have all those encouraging thoughts before the swim.

Finally my crew told me I had less than an hour to swim. Apparently I was heading straight for Cap Griz Nez, the shortest point to swim to. I didn't really react to this. I couldn't see the Cap, land still looked a pretty long way off and I wanted to remain focused until the swim was truly over.

I noticed as I was swimming that the whole crew then huddled in the cabin like a power meeting .I decided maybe it was going to be a tricky ending and they were working out how to guide me into the end and got quite excited at the prospect.

At the next feed I asked if this was my last feed and everyone looked a bit shifty and awkward and said no. I was too tired to ask why and found it almost amusing that they had given me the wrong information when I had thought it still seemed a long way away. It turned out that at the very last moment the tide had turned and was whisking me further along the coast, meaning I'd have to swim almost two hours longer before I hit land.

I decided to make sure they regretted telling me the wrong thing!

For the next three feeds I asked if that was my last feed and they said no. I was beginning to feel really tired by this point and although up until now I had enjoyed the swim now I was just swimming because I knew that the longer I stopped the longer the swim would last.

I knew I just had to keep my head down and keep going but it wasn't fun or exciting anymore it was just tiring. Nothing specific was hurting or aching but just moving my arms round and round felt hard. I started to think how nice it would be to stop swimming. I imagined being out of the water and stretching out in bed. I worried these were dangerous thoughts, I knew the swim could still be a lot longer yet and tried to just concentrate on swimming.

I remembered Freda telling me about Little Lee, who at just 14 had missed the Cap by a mere 400m and continued swimming for another 2-3 hours without complaining. "I was just amazed that a 14 year old could have that kind of determination," she told me.

I urged myself on with these thoughts thinking of how if a 14 year old could do it, then so could I.

But out of the corner of my eye I watched the sun sinking.

It suddenly seemed to be racing down towards the sea and knew I could soon be swimming in the darkness.

Then at the next feed my crew told me I had just 2000m left. I wasn't entirely sure I believed them - the beach still looked a long way and they had lied before! "

"It's your last feed" they told me. "Really?" I asked.

"You can smell the garlic!" shouted Chris.

"You're so close!" my mum said.

"I'm so slow?," I asked, feeling all miserable and thinking didn't anyone tell them they're supposed to only say positive things?

"No you're so close," she urged.

I smiled, but inside I didn't feel anything as I knew I had got closer than this last time and still not hit dry land.

"It's not over until you touch the shore" I told myself.

Then really quite soon, Simon, the observer appeared clad in trunks and a hat with a nightstick. My mum explained that the boat couldn't go any further so he was going to swim in with me.

But even then I wasn't convinced.

Simon jumped in and speeded off. Any competitive instinct about keeping up had entirely deserted me, I just watched him head off feeling slow and despondent.

But Simon was just warming up and quickly turned and swam back towards me. He told me to head for the blue light that we could see on the shore. I followed him in, enjoying the company, but still not believing we were close. Suddenly he told me to put my legs down.

I was incredulous, it seemed a ludicrous idea having been horizontal for so long that I would actually be able to put my feet down let alone stand up.

It still seemed really deep, but I tested it and stood straight up. The water was waist deep! I couldn't believe it.

"Run" he urged. And I did.

Earlier Steve had told me to savour this moment. To stop just before hitting land, look up and remember what it felt like.

No way, I thought, what if some freak tidal wave comes in and blows me back to England!

I kept running towards the light and some steps and oddly towards this huge crowd who had gathered on the Wissant promenade. It was sunset on a beautiful Friday evening and everyone must have decided to take a stroll and then had spotted me heading towards shore.

Finally we reached the steps. A huge cheer erupted and people clapped. I remember feeling slightly panicky - I knew no one could touch you before your swim was over and was really worried someone may rush off and try to help me reach the end.

But I touched the steps and immediately sat down absolutely spent. I felt total relief to stop and suddenly just absolutely exhausted.

"I've done it" I thought to myself, but felt no elation just grateful to no longer have to swim and oddly self conscious that all these people were peering at me when I felt so tired and exposed and emotional. I couldn't even lift my arms to wave, I just sat down trying to take it in and trying not to cry.

A man kept showing me his watch and asking, I think,what time I had set off. I couldn't' remember and even if I could I couldn't imagine how to answer in English let alone French. Simon took my photo with the waterproof camera he had on his leg and then a man took one of us together.

I was pretty sure I didn't look very happy in these photos as I was just too exhausted to smile. But when they were processed they showed me with a huge grin on my face.

Then Simon asked whether I was ready to swim back to the boat. I thought he was joking.

"You mean we have to swim back?" I asked. He nodded, and I really wondered whether I could swim back the necessary 500m or so, it seemed so far.

I decided the sooner I did the sooner I could lie down. I stood up to set off. As I waved at the crowd they all cheered and some took photos. Then I just kept my head down until I got to the boat.

I climbed up the steps and my mum put my towel over my head and helped me to put all my layers on. Everyone looked really happy. "I did it," I said. I promptly vomited and then went to sleep.

We got back to the harbour around midnight and I went straight to the hotel to sleep. Then suddenly at 4am I woke up feeling ecstatic. I started texting people madly to tell them I'd done it.

I couldn't wait for the next day to start so I could celebrate. I really had done it," it. I had finally swum to France!