From January to March 2014 I swam frequently in the local (very heated) 25m pool and I hated every minute of it!

The pool was always busy and the swimming lane was a ridiculous double width fast lane full of head up, screw kicking breaststrokers. All in all I swam 60 sessions in the pool over this period covering 114.5 km and  wasting in the region of 47 hours. On the plus side my Garmin told me that I had burned 39,000 calories, but I more than replenished these with cake! Apparently cake was the staple diet of all aspiring Channel swimmers and I was very happy about that.

Things were starting to look up, the wall planner showed that I was on track and on the 17th April 2014 the family and I were heading down to Devon for the Easter weekend, and hopefully my first dip in the sea.

Thankfully, I had also managed to secure a boat for my Loch Lomond swim, I was confident that it would be suitable for my crew and sorting that out had lifted a huge weight from my shoulders.

I still hadn’t submitted my entry form for the swim because I was sadly lacking in the pre-requisite open water swimming experience. The entry form was asking for evidence of at least an 8 mile swim within the last two years. Although I had achieved this during my first 6 hour swim, the entry form had space for 4 swims in the experience section and I wanted to fill it. I knew that ‘swimming in Spain on holiday’ was probably not going to cut it in this instance, and I wanted to beef up my experience with a couple more 6 hour swims before the entry deadline in July.

We always looked forward to heading down to Exmouth as since my mum died suddenly of cancer a few years before, Terry (my mum’s hubby of ten years since my parents divorce) had retained the house when he moved to Australia. It is great that we are still able to stay there when we visit and I certainly feel closer to my mum when we are at the house.

Being at home also gives us the opportunity to visit mum’s bench. We commissioned a commemorative plaque which has pride of place on a wooden bench at mum’s favourite spot, overlooking the beach at Budleigh. It’s right next to the war memorial at the top of the hill and marks the spot where we scattered mum’s ashes.

I always love swimming at Budleigh, the swimming area is well-marked with equally spaced yellow buoys and offers a challenging mile long circuit. You swim 1/2 mile up and 1/2 mile back and always against the tide in one of those legs. Coincidently the turning point is level with the easily visible war memorial and mum’s bench. That always keeps me going on the long swims, thinking that mum is somehow present when things are getting tough.

Anyway I digress, my first venture into the sea was not as warm as I would have liked and lasted for exactly 12 minutes and 55 seconds, not even one circuit.

The whole family was back on the beach the beach the next day. Slightly unhappy that I’d only managed a short dip the day before, this time I was determined to swim a lap. As you can see below I still hadn’t mastered swimming in a straight line, but at least I managed a mile.

I exited the water in real style, very much like a beached whale and then hobbled gingerly up the stoney beach ( I will never get used to walking on those stones). I managed to dry and dress myself but when handed a cuppa tea I proceeded to spill it all over myself due to the onset of the shakes. The shakes took a while to subside but I’ve learnt since that shaking is good news and it’s all part of the fun..

Having enjoyed our short visit we decided that heading home on the Sunday would allow us to miss the bank holiday traffic, and would give me the opportunity to check out the lake that Mark Sheridan had mentioned before Christmas when we had lunch.

As it turned out I needed to do a swim assessment at the lake before I was able to swim alone, and the bank holiday weekend was the very first opportunity to do this. Apparently swim assessments are only conducted when the water temperature reaches double figures!

I was feeling confident following my dip at Budleigh and was wondering if the Nutters Mark had mentioned previously, would be in attendance at the lake…