Tues 31st July:

I am now living in a tent in Dover! Putting a tent up in heavy winds was not fun and the pieces kept blowing away, but 2 hours later, the tent was up! I will begin my heavy sea training this week. I have been coming up to Dover to train in the harbour at weekends for the past 3 months, ever since the water was 12 degrees! Now it is 16 degrees which I am acclimatising to very well. It is not quite an indoor swimming pool, but soon it should feel like one! I intend to train here in Dover Harbour for the next few weeks in order to discipline myself more for cold water training and the currents of the sea. I feel very positive about the whole experience and it is very surreal to be in the final stage of a one year project.

Wed 1st August:

Last night I went out for dinner with 10 other Channel swimmers who I befriended earlier in the day on the beech. I have never had any qualms with going and talking with complete strangers, and I am always fascinated to watch the outcomes and learn how much we have in common. We went to an Italian restaurant and ordered up the whole menu of pasta which was a good idea, since today I swam for 6 hours. This was rather tough after yesterdays set and the sea was very choppy indeed which was very frustrating. This factor was not helped by the fact that 2 boats missed my head by just over a metre. I am out for dinner with another group of friends tonight who I met today. I am going to have to start watching the pennies I think, since my wallet is becoming rather thin! After spending lots of money on camping stoves, pots, and pans, I am still yet to cook a single meal since I have been eating out instead!

Thurs 2nd August:

Last night?s meal was delicious. I can never say no to an all you can eat Chinese, especially after 4 hours of swimming! Today I swam for just 3 hours to let my muscles recover a bit. Tomorrow morning some of my friends are doing a cross Channel Relay, which is where 6 people swim an hour each until they reach France. I am a reserve swimmer for them since one may have to go back to work. It would certainly be a good bit of training for me if I go. Tonight I am going night swimming for the first time since on the actual Channel swim, part of the journey will be in darkness. Imagine being in freezing water in pitch black, not knowing what is below you or around you, or where you even are. How exciting! I can?t wait! I am sure you all feel the same.

Fri 3rd August:

Today my sports science team came down to Dover to run some final tests on me before the swim. I swam for just 2 hours in the Harbour, whilst they analysed my blood for lactate acid every half hour. The results were very encouraging indeed and showed that my lactate levels were actually decreasing the more I swam, which is fantastic news since in theory that means I can swim for hours in the cold waters of the sea. I am going back home to Cambridge tonight for one night only to attend a club night where all of the profits made on the door will go to The Prostate Cancer Research Centre as sponsorship for the Channel Swim. I better not stay out too late though since I will have to be back in Dover tomorrow for more swimming!

Sat 4th August:

I am now back in Dover. Last night was great fun, and the club (Cella Bar 8) raised 350 pounds for my swim! The early night that I intended on happening did not occur and I got to bed around 3am. It was good to see my friends again though. I just swam for 2 hours today since tomorrow I will be taking part in the relay that I mentioned a few days ago. There are 5 of us in total and we will be swimming for an hour each before rotating the cycle. We are aiming for 12 hours to get to France, but it will be fantastic training for me ready for my solo swim next week. I hear that the hardest part is the waiting around on the boat for hours before and after you swim when doing a relay but we shall see... Not only will this be some good deep sea training, but it will also mean touching France twice within a couple of weeks, (if all goes to plane anyway!)

Sun 5th August:

Relay Day! We set off at 8.32 am and swam an hour each until we reached France, which we did at 7pm. Our total time was 10 hours 28 mins which was great! The weather was overcast and rainy but that was good since all of the jelly fish stayed 6ft below the surface. I saw about 8 in total. Big brown things with long tentacles! Luckily I avoided getting stung. Swimming in the deep sea was totally different to swimming in Dover Harbour or a pool. The water is crystal clear but descends into nothingness. It was about 50m deep all the way and I spent the first 45 mins of my first hour freaking out about what was watching me from the depths! This paranoia soon subsided though and I relaxed by singing motown in my head! When we touched down in France on the beech of Calais, a big storm had hit and it took us 3 and a half hours to get back to England in force 8 gales which upturned tables on the boat and sent bags flying as waves crashed over the cabin! All in all though the swim was very successful and I feel very lucky to have experienced swimming the Channel before I do my solo swim next week.

Mon 6th August:

After a very long sleep after the relay yesterday, I jumped into the sea today for 3 hours swimming in Dover Harbour. My batteries are fully recharged and I feel very motivated and confident for my solo swim next week. I am going out for dinner tonight with some more friends to get lots of energy on board for tomorrows training session. This week is the last of my ?hard core? training hours before I start tapering and dropping my hours to 1 to 1 ? hours per day. The training is starting to become quite a chore now but I am trying to stay motivated and on top form regardless of the weather conditions!

Tues 7th August:

After a 4 hour training session on the sea I went to a pub in Dover called The White Horse. This pub is infamous with Channel Swimmers since every swimmer who swims the Channel is allowed to sign their wall in permanent marker with their name, date of swim and time that they completed their swim in. I signed the wall from our whole relay team since they all had to go home yesterday. It?s nice to know that our mark is now left in this town for eternity, (or until they decide to redecorate!) Hopefully I will be back there in a couple of weeks to sign the wall again after my solo swim.

Wed 8th August:

3 hours swimming in the harbour today followed by an all you can eat Chinese. I have met a group of South African swimmers this morning who have just flown in. I did a bit of sprint work with them in the Harbour between marker buoys, and it certainly showed that I have not done any sprint work for a while! I felt absolutely exhausted after a few sprints, which a month ago, I was able to do for hours in a pool! I have just been doing hours upon hours of slow distance and endurance swimming in Dover, and so my speed and ability to sprint has suffered as a result. This does not bother me though, since I am hardly going to sprint as fast as I can over to France! I am doing this swim just to make it over to Calais. I will be just as happy with making the swim in 24 hours as I would in 8 hours so time really is not an issue. I have trained myself to swim for hours upon hours very slowly to maintain energy. The old story of the tortoise vs the hare comes to mind.

Thurs 10th August:

Another 3 hour swim today in the harbour. I am starting to feel the pain in my muscles from too many days of heavy training with too little rest, but these sort of hours are soon to come to an end. I will take a day off tomorrow since it is thundering and lightning down here in Kent. The rest will do me good and allow my muscles to recover a bit before resuming the training on Saturday for one final blast before the tapering process begins.

Friday 11th August:

God bless bad weather! It is thundering and lightning down here and so I do not have to feel guilty about taking a day off. I have just sat in my tent all day reading, which may sound pretty sad, but it has certainly done me the world of good and I feel much more relaxed. It was lovely not to have to be up at 6 and in the sea for 8! Tomorrow will be the last day of long training swims before dropping the hours and mileage considerably. I will still have to swim for a bit every day though just to stay acclimatised and used to the cold waters.

Sat 12th August:

It has been raining all day, again, and I have done a 3 hour swim. I have actually begun to quite enjoy swimming in the rain though since it flattens the water, and lets face it, I?m wet anyway! My parents arrived in Dover today with my friend Natasha. They will all be on the boat acting as part of my support team and they are all shocked how quickly this whole thing has come around. Not as shocked as me though! A year ago this was all just an idea. Next week it will become a reality.

Sun 13th August:

2 hours swimming in the rain started my day off today. It has now brightened up though. Three of my friends came down today including my coach Stu Taylor who will also be on the boat. They will be staying down here for the week with me. The only difference is that I will be swimming whilst they are all fishing and drinking beer. As I mentioned in a passed entry though, the tapering process has now begun so I will be doing an hour per day from now on. This will allow my muscles to recover and be 100% efficient for the swim at the end of the week which I think will take place on Friday or Saturday. It is important that I swim every day until then for short distances in order to stay acclimatised.

Mon 14th August:

I am certainly enjoying just swimming for an hour now. It?s lovely not to have the whole day revolving around swimming! I have moved out of my tent now and into a hotel on the sea front. Although I slept very well on my blow up mattress in a drafty tent, it is nice to have a bit more comfort and rest. I am now sat in my room looking out to France. It is beginning to hit home just how surreal this whole experience is. In 7 days time I will hopefully be standing on the other side looking back at Dover.

Tues 15th August:

I woke up this morning and was violently sick. I have spent the rest of the day in bed in a dark room suffering from the worst migraine I have ever experienced. It is now 9O?Clock at night and I am finally beginning to feel normal again which is such a relief since for a moment I thought I was coming down with something much more serious which would be disastrous! I think that the whole being sick thing, was more to do with eating a family bucket of KFC last night before bed rather than the migraine. I am just so grateful that I am ok now though! I have just got off the phone with my pilot, (the boat captain), and he is confident that I will be swimming on Friday or Saturday, starting at 5am, which means getting up at 3.30 for breakfast! Not long to go now.

Wed 16th August:

I swam for 45 minutes today whilst my friends were off fishing for mackerel for my lunch off the end of Dover pier. Stu, my coach, says he may join me for a short night swim tonight which could be interesting. Bare in mind I have been acclimatising to this temperature of water for moths, and he is yet to paddle in it yet! Tomorrow it will be time to begin a ?Carbohydrate Loading Program,? where I eat huge amounts of carbs such as porridge and pasta for the next few days leading up to the swim, in order to give a good base of energy to burn. Tomorrow could be the last day before I swim, which is very surreal. The most torturous bit of swimming the Channel, is waiting for that phone call that says you are going. When it will come, it is impossible to know, but the waiting and the suspense is horrible! I just want to do it now!

Thurs 17th August:

The weather isn?t looking great. No swimmers went out today due to the bad weather and my piolet now thinks that we could be waiting for next week before I swim. On the bright side, it gives me a bit more time to prepare. Also I just found out that our relay from a couple of weeks ago set a new world record for the fastest 5 person relay! That fills me with a bit of confidence. I just have to continue playing the waiting game now.

Fri 18th August:

OK, well the weather people couldn?t have been more wrong. The weather is great today and several Channel swimmers went out. I am in position 3 of the queue, and number 1?s went out today. Perhaps this wait will not be going into next week after all. I started recording the opening shots for another small documentary today, which will be similar to the one on my homepage promoting the swim. The new one will follow the actual Channel swim and the establishing shots were taken today from on top of the white cliffs looking out to sea. 45 minutes swimming just off the coast of Shakespeare Beech bought the day to a close as the sun set. Who needs the Caribbean for a holiday when you have Dover!

Sat 19th August:

I have just had a phone call that says I could be swimming tomorrow morning, since number 2?s went out today. I knew one of these people that went today and he was a very strong swimmer. However the waves were so strong that he got 4 miles out before the pilot called it off. No matter how strong a swimmer you are, the ocean always has the final say. I have put the entire boat team on standby for tomorrow though, meaning that they may have to drive down here to Dover in the morning for 5am. That is quite a drive from Cambridge, where a few will be coming from! The magnitude of this event has hit home today, and it is a very strange sensation to know that in 24 hours time I could be in the middle of the ocean swimming between countries! I don?t want to get my hopes up though because in the world of Channel Swimming, nothing is set in stone.

Sun 20th August:

Well, I did not swim today (Again!) Although it has been beautifully sunny here in Dover, the winds were still too strong. 2 hours swimming in the harbour gave me huge waves to battle against so I am glad that I did not do the big swim in a way. It is now looking like Tuesday before I swim, but I would rather wait for the perfect day then go out on one that could effect my performance. Unfortunately that means that all of my friends have had to go home back to Cambridge, including my coach. My flat mate Natsaha has also had to go home since she became quite ill and didn?t want to infect me which is fair enough since that is the last thing I need right now! It does however mean that my support team will be down by a couple of people but I can cope with that. As I have said many times now, tomorrow will be my last free day before I swim! I have been here for a month now though, and I am really looking forwards to going home.

Mon 21st August:

It is 3.30 in the afternoon and I am sitting in my hotel room waiting to hear if I will be swimming in the morning. I am utterly fed up of getting my hopes up every day just to have them destroyed. It is taking every ounce of strength to remember why I am doing this and I constantly wonder whether it is worth it. Every second of this torturous waiting seems like an hour and I hate it. All I can do is sit and wait, and for all I know it could be another week of it. My tide ends on Wednsday, so if I don?t swim by then, I will have to swim on a spring tide, which will mean swimming for over 40 miles across a much wider course and though a much larger volume of water. The thought of it makes me sick, but if I have to do it, I?ll do it. In the year that I have been planning and working towards this swim, I could never have imagined just how horrible the final waiting stages could be. I have been positive for a year but my patience are beginning to wear thin.

TUESDAY 22ND AUGUST: THE BIG SWIM IS FINALLY HERE!!!:

It seems that my pessimistic rant yesterday was heard by the Universe since last night at 9 PM I found out that I am swimming to France today! The waiting has certainly given me a will power to swim, since the further I get away from Dover, the better! I am aiming to reach France by midnight which will mean swimming in the dark with glow sticks attached to my limbs, but as long as I get there, I don?t care! 14 hours in the water will be a very long and boring time, but there will be a white board attached to the boat for my crew to write me messages, so if you would like to say hi, then please ring or txt me on 07739 804 389 and your messages will be written up for me to see as I swim. Well, I?m going to be starting very shortly now, so until next time, good bye!