A Derbyshire man is safely back on dry land after fulfilling his ambition of swimming the English Channel – after braving jellyfish stings, experiencing close encounters with supertankers and even passing a migrant boat along the way.
Paul Robinson, 36, who lives in Risley, took 13 hours to complete the crossing after setting off from a beach just outside Dover at midnight last Wednesday and setting foot in France in mid-afternoon.
The triumph, which he undertook in order to raise fund for Rainbows Hospice in Loughborough, brought to a close a 10-year journey for Paul, who set his heart on a solo crossing of the Channel when he took part in a relay crossing with two other swimmers in 2010.
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Paul Robinson with his family as he prepares to embark on his challenge for Rainbows Hospice
An experienced triathlete, dad of two Paul, who works as a commercial manager at Lubrizol in Hazelwood, wanted to use his challenge to raise £5,000 for the hospice, which cares for children and their families from across the East Midlands – with £500 coming from Lubrizol.
He has devoted countless hours to training for his swim and should have completed his attempt last year, only for the weather to intervene and force him to postpone his swim for a further 12 months.
However, fate nearly intervened again this year when the coronavirus lockdown meant that Paul was no longer allowed to train at his local swimming pool in March – meaning he did not swim a stroke for seven weeks.
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Paul embarked on his swim at midnight in early August, backed by a support crew including his dad, Dave, and his friend Sam Windless. He began at a beach called Samphire Hoe, plunging into the dark, choppy water and battling against the conditions before they started to subside at dawn, some four or five hours later.
An hour later, he reached the separation zone – a mile-wide strip of sea which separates the two busy shipping lanes which take hundreds of vessels, including container ships and supertankers, up and down the Channel.
There, he faced his biggest challenge – jelly fish, floating in amongst the seaweed and debris.
He said: “I’d already seen a few jellyfish and had avoided them, but there were loads in the separation zone and they were so small that you couldn’t see them.
“I got stung all over my body, including twice on my face and neck, which gave me a burning sensation that lasted for 10 minutes. It’s very uncomfortable but I found that by trying to spot them I wasn’t concentrating on my stroke, so the only way to deal with them is to get your head down and just keep going.”
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In order to complete his swim Paul needed to take on food and water on a regular basis and it was on one of his refuelling stops that he came aware of a migrant boat that was travelling in the opposite direction, packed with 12 people seeking the safety of Britain just a few miles away across the sea.
“It was a tiny inflatable boat with an outboard motor and my first thought was how dangerous their journey was, going across one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world,” he said.
“Supertankers are massive, and the only reason why I wasn’t getting run over by one of them was because I had a qualified pilot, who was experienced and registered and was in radio contact with them to tell them that we were there.”
“The migrants had nothing like that.”
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Paul was aiming for Cap Gris-Nez, a rocky outcrop which juts out into the Channel 21 miles from Dover – the closest point to England, because by landing there he had a chance of completing his swim in 12 hours.
However, the current sweeping around the Cap is strong, and, although he got close enough to see the rocks and even a monument standing above the cliffs, he soon found himself travelling sidewards and had to watch the Cap slide agonisingly out of view.
At that stage, with exhaustion kicking in and his hopes for a good time crushed, Paul started to fear that he wasn’t going to make it.
He kept going, and eventually landed at Wissant Bay, a golden beach some 10 miles from Calais, which was filled with families enjoying a summer’s day out. Because the water was too shallow for the boat to enter, Paul was accompanied for the last few hundred metres by a crew member in an inflatable dinghy, while his dad and Sam shouted encouragement from the boat, further out to sea.
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Exhausted and disorientated, he dragged himself out of the water almost exactly 13 hours after plunging into the dark waves on Samphire Hoe.
“I could see that some families on the beach were sitting up and watching me,” said Paul. “There they were, in their shorts and typical beach wear and here I was, a guy in Speedos, goggles and a swimming hat with flashing lights attached to it.
“As I walked up the beach, my legs were pretty unsteady. I had been horizontal in the water for 13 hours and I felt slightly drunk, but I’d done it.”
Although Paul had undertaken his swim as a personal challenge and to raise money for Rainbows, he also undertook his challenge in memory of a friend, Tim Ager, who he worked with in a sports shop while he was growing up in Leeds but who died last year.
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He has also thanked his swimming coach, Mel Berry, the team at Spring Lakes in Long Eaton, Kevin Murphy – an experienced Channel swimmer who helped him to prepare and his family – wife Louise and daughters Isabelle (10) and Felicity, seven.
He said: “It’s a tradition for swimmers to pick up a pebble from the beach when they arrive and I picked up four – one for me, one for Louise and two for my girls – and seeing them waiting for me with a congratulations banner when I got back to Dover was a wonderful experience.
“I’m so happy to have achieved something I’ve waited 10 years to complete but I’m very well aware of everyone who has helped me and I remember at one point during the swim, when I could see France and I had started to relax, how much my family have missed out on seeing me because of my training over the past two years.
“They have put up a lot and so even while I had still some way to go, I thought about how I would be taking a break from swimming when it was all over, so that I could spend more time with them.”
To donate to Rainbows Hospice visit Paul’s JustGiving page at https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/robboschannelswim
ENDS
For further information please contact Simon Burch on 01332 824941 or email [email protected]
