From swimming the Scilly Isles in 2004 to my next bucket list trip!

It was in 2004, I read an article about a company who were taking people to swim round the Scilly Isles. I have always been a swimmer, not a very fast one but full of enthusiasm. I did fitness lane swimming and always swam along beaches .Well; I booked in to one of the early SwimTrek holidays and followed their training programme. I can remember the day when swimming the 64 lengths in the pool no longer felt like an effort. I had also learnt to do front crawl.

On the ferry to the Scilly’s a SwimTrek T-shirt was my introduction to one of our guides, Suzie. I discovered that she had swum the channel both ways, plus Lake Tahoe Lake Zurich and much more. I shall never forget Suzie, as I power my way up and down the pool I hear her say “move your hips - you're a woman”

Settled in our comfortable B&B we met the rest of the group. An acclimatisation swim proved to me that I would be in the slower group although one of the other swimmers was the same speed as me.

Day 1 and we stood on the shore at St. Mary's looking across to St Martins. I remember that first swim seemed the hardest one I have ever done and it was only 2k. My swimming buddy and I arrived together. Suzie tactfully suggested we should try fins.

We quickly adjusted to these fins and found ourselves nearer to the rest of the group. A short but testing swim against the tide of 1 1/2 km to Tean and then back to base. As the six days progressed we swam Tean to Tresco 1 1/2 km, Tresco to Bryher 1/2k, Bryher to Samson 1 km and the last day Samson to St Agnes a massive 5 km followed by our last swim St Agnes - St Mary's 1 1/2K. Oddly enough it seemed to get easier as we got fitter and a huge bond had built up within the group. Our guides were so supportive.

Since then I have done other SwimTrek holidays – Hellespont, Croatia, Lake Bled and most recently Durdle Door, which I did to raise money for Breast Cancer Now in memory of a friend.

I shall remember Scilly isles as the most challenging and the place where I got the SwimTrek bug.

Husband Bob a non-swimmer has been on all my SwimTrek holidays and the image above is one of his water colour pictures he’s painted while I was swimming.

Next, I am off to swim around Burgh Island and have Montenegro on my bucket list as trip I would like to do next.