Paul Bampton, Glyn Bevans, Richard Dines, Glen Hall & Peter Lillie are swimming around the Isle of Wight as a relay to help raise money for children living with Cancer in the UK.

Potentially facing unpredictable weather and very strong tides this epic challenge around the island is circa 56 miles (90km).

Our training for this venture started back in July 2022 after making the commitment to take on this challenge of swimming around the Isle of Wight as a relay team of five.

Since then we’ve approached our training in a similar way as to when we prepared for our double English Channel crossing as a four person swim relay team.

The pool swim training has included double and triple swim days with each swim being at least an hour with 3 – 4 hours rest in between.

Occasionally it was simply swimming a mass set of 100 metre reps for 2.5 hours. On one day it was 40 x 100m at 08:00, 40 x 100m at 13:00 and then 30 x 100m at 18:00, such fun!

We tend to focus on maintaining a consistent and healthy pace in the pool and then take that pace into our longer (outdoor) swims. We don’t profess to be experts on all of this but it’s worked successfully for us over many years.

We started swimming back in the sea in early May which was later than planned and quite a challenge for most of us as it had been a while since our last sea swim in 2022. The water temperatures proved to be kinder than first thought as they’ve definitely been warmer compared to 2015. However, the sea state for many of our sea swims has been choppy to rough, and once or twice simply horrendous. On those days after an hour or two it was deemed definitely time to withdraw to the warmth and safety of a Dry Robe, the beach and a warm drink with cake.

We are supporting Children living with cancer in the UK. Please feel free to sponsor our team for another crazy challenge!

Paul, Glyn, Richard, Glen & Peter.