Dark water, brave souls
Dark Water, brave souls - swimming the English Channel at night, put into perspective.
I was chatting with one of my best friends over a beer, telling him about our latest channel relay swim and swimming in the Dark. I explained how difficult it is to truly replicate that experience in training beforehand. The cold, the swell, the isolation... it’s hard to prepare anyone for it properly.
He responded with a sobering tale of his own, one that made my stories seem almost tame by comparison.
Years ago, he was over a kilometre underground, beneath Holme Pierrepont Rowing Lake near Nottingham. There was no light. As part of a pre-shift inspection, he had to strip off naked, pack his clothing, helmet, and head torch battery into a big black bin liner, and swim 200 yards through a flooded coal seam. He described the silence, the pitch black, the weight of rock above him. It sounded terrifying, far beyond anything I’ve experienced in the English Channel. It wasn’t just swimming in the dark. It was swimming in the dark with the earth pressing in from every side.
Personally, I’ve done my fair share of night swims in the English Channel….and I hated nearly every second of it. I’ve done several relays, including a relay where both my hours fell in complete darkness. And despite serving over 20 years in the military, with tours in Afghanistan and Kosovo, I still found every minute in that water a mental battle.
You’re swimming through a swell you can’t see, knowing jellyfish are out there, feeling the brush of wildlife you’ll never identify. Every stroke invites a new trick from your mind. You hear things, feel things, shadows with weight. There’s no horizon, no reference point, just cold and black and the sound of your breathing.
And yet, I take my hat off to my young swimmers, the 12 and 13 year-olds who step into that same water without complaint. They might not have seen combat or been underground in a flooded mine, but they show a different kind of bravery. Quiet, unflinching, and raw.
I also salute my old mate. What he did, underground, in that total darkness, with no safety line and no fanfare, is the stuff of nightmares. It puts into perspective just how deep courage can go….. chapeau!