Swimming the Channel

Published 23:14 on 13 Aug 2025

Ollie Williams writes: Two years ago I agreed to undertake a challenge with 5 of my school friends to swim a Channel relay. The swim was planned to take place in September 2024 and so the group, under the guidance of a very experienced Channel swimmer, started training. Unfortunately, the weather last September never gave us a window and we all committed to trying again this year and so our training continued. Read more here.

After sitting our A-levels this summer and training throughout, we finally got the call to swim on 11 August. We arrived in Dover to meet our boat, Gallivant, at 08:00 hours and our swim officially started at 08:51 hours from Shakespeare Beach. We swam an hour each and continued to swim in strict rotation until we reached France. 11 August was a beautiful, hot, sunny day but the wind gradually increased during the day and the conditions got rougher, and at some points it felt like we were swimming in a washing machine! It was interesting swimming across the shipping lanes and into the exclusion zone (and going over a sand bar mid Channel) and we saw lots of container ships, yachts, ferries, and border force vessels (both French and British).

11 August turned out to be the biggest tide of the year for swimmers so far in 2025, which meant the currents were very strong pulling us east and west and going against the wind caused some big waves!

It started getting dark after sunset and the swimmers then wore lights and the boat's spotlight kept us in their sights. We could see the French coast tantalisingly close but the current swept us past Cap Gris Nez and we knew we would be swimming beyond 12 hours. During our 14th hour we finally made land, with the swimmer of the time climbing out of the sea and clambering over the rocks until they were completely out (Channel swim rules dictate that the swimmer's ankles have to be out of the water). Officially our time was 13 hours and 47 minutes with a distance covered of 56.39km.

I decided to swim the Channel in aid of the Ellen Macarthur Cancer Trust and if anyone would like to support our effort for this amazing charity, here's my link.