Easter 2018, 13 swimmers from Wellingborough Amateur Swimming Club (WASC), head off to Spain to complete one week of intensive and grueling warm weather training covering around 75,000m with the aim of building strength, stamina and speed, to help them achieve regional and national qualification times. The swimmers are funding the cost of the trip themselves, but unfortunately a few weeks ago they were hit with the news that their flights, booked with Monarch Airways, were cancelled due to the collapse of the company. They how have to find the extra funds to book the flights with another airline.

To raise these much needed funds, the swimmers have got together and decided to do something about it. They have set themselves the challenge of swimming the distance of the English Channel (21 miles) in a relay. This equates to 1344 lengths of a 25m pool! To top it off they have set a time of 4.5 hrs to complete the challenge. This is quite a challenge as the fastest swim of the English Channel is 6 hrs 52 mins.

These swimmers spend hours upon hours each week training and pushing themselves to the limit to achieve their goals and ambitions. Some of them might even be our national sporting stars of the future. So if you can afford to spare a few pounds to help them reach their sporting potential it would be much appreciated.