Quite the start!

During my practice swims in October I’ve been trying to swim further than the 500m which was the standard distance for the last challenge I did. So I have a number of routes ‘mapped’ out to use with differing distances depending on the conditions. When I arrived at the beach hut today my first thought was that 500m would be a good achievement.

However despite the rather lively nature of the sea the water temperature was a balmy 12.4 degrees so when I reached the 500m mark I decided to continue on for another 250m resulting in a starting distance of 750m towards the November total of 3000m. I was delighted to see David Griffiths from WinterFest, who had come down in the rain to witness the spectacle of the first swim of this challenge - thank you David!

I had planned to swim tomorrow, however with Storm Ciaran on its way it is looking increasingly unlikely. I will be heading down the prom early in the morning to see if the beach hut survives. It will certainly be battered by predicted 54mph winds coinciding with a decent sized tide (4.80m at 02:19 on Thursday morning). My next swim is at 14:34 with a 4.96m tide and winds still predicted to be 45mph.