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I interrupt this broadcast on Feminism (actually I suspect I’m writing a book) to bring you the story of my holiday; I use the term “holiday” loosely. Yes, this is What I Did On My Holidays, in fact What I Did On My Holidays Last Week, when I was at a Swimtrek Long Distance Training Camp. The camp was in Majorca, where I can reveal that the water does in fact not taste like what it oughta*, and it prepares participants for long distance swims. In this context ‘long distance’ means anything in excess of six hours, including Channel swims and relays. Before we start I should add hastily that I am definitely NOT planning a Channel swim or another relay; I went to support a friend who is considering a Channel solo this year and to get better myself at cold water swimming and sea swimming. Of which more later…..

The trip does exactly what it says on the tin, in that it ain’t a holiday as such, but rather a boot camp for people who want to swim the Channel, or the Gibraltar Straits, or Lake Zurich. If I’d done this trip before my Channel relay last year I would have been a lot better prepared. I would also have been a lot more terrified. Fewer people have swum the Channel solo than have climbed Everest and there’s a reason for that – it’s bloody difficult. Since this trip is to prepare people for up to twenty hours of bloody difficult, Swimtrek build a lot of bloody difficult into the trip. It is excellent preparation for swimming the Channel, and, as I discovered, for not swimming the Channel as well.

More tomorrow.

*The tap water in the apartments we were staying in tasted soapy and salty, so we had to buy bottled water to drink.