On Monday 15th August, the time came for Gary Carpenter to realise his ambition of swimming the English Channel, with the Western Counties relay team. He set a superb time and raised a staggering amount of money for Charity in the process. After narrowly missing selection for the team last year, where he was first reserve, his continued training and dedication paid off and he was rewarded with the opening swim of the relay.

Under the guidance of 45 time English Channel Swimmer and winner of 6 Blue Peter Badges, Alison Streeter MBE, with her Channel Swimming and Piloting Federation, Gary begun the swim with a run from Shakespeare Beach, Dover, into the English Channel at 6:27 AM. With each of the six team members swimming for an hour at a time, Gary put in a strong first leg to complete 2.3 miles before handing over to other members of the team assembled by manager Wendy Coles: Paul Wilson from Devon, Emma Cockroft from Bridgwater, Helen Legg from Gloucestershire, Robin Shute from Devon and Robert Cook from Gloucester. Gary then took over from Robert for a second hour swimming even further with a 2.7 mile effort. The team finished the crossing to France in a mere nine hours and six minutes, the fastest European team of the year. Only an Australian Team crossed in a quicker time.

The team were in Dover for four days waiting for the correct weather conditions and queuing behind other teams and swimmers. But when their time came the sea was slightly choppy in places, but a following wind and a neap tide helped produce near ideal conditions. Jellyfish were also noted by their absence and only one of the team had problems with seasickness during the time they had to wait before they could start their swim. The most notable occurrence was when the wake of tanker violently rocked the pilot boat causing fear of a capsize, however, Gary could only sum up the smooth progress of the swim by saying it was “Not as eventful as last year!” referring to his role supporting the team during 2004’s successful relay swim.

Gary’s support and dedication to the team last year virtually ensured his place for this year’s attempt, but he didn’t take this lightly putting plenty in of additional hours training and still had to prove his worth in trials. As well as evening training, he undertook at least two mornings a week, sea swimming with the Middle Yeo Surf Life Saving Club, as well as gym work and rugby. He also prepared with several open water swims including the BLDSA “Champion of Champions” event held over distances of 5 Miles, 3 Miles and 1 Mile on the same day, Pier to Pier at Bournemouth, Henleaze Lake and of course the Clevedon Long Swim.

The efforts did not stop there though as Gary had also set himself a target to raise money for this year’s nominated Charity, Children’s Hospice Southwest. £20,000 was the target and the latest news is that he has only around £1100.00 short of this astounding target. With fantastic support from his whole family, particularly Mum and Dad, money has been raised by various means including; the Babeathon Sponsored swim, a ‘Race Night’, private sponsorship, a Golf Day organised by some of Paul Carpenter’s work contacts, bag packing, selling videos in Paul’s shop and sponsorship raised by his school. The target set for this part of the challenge is surely a sign of further challenges to come, and they weren’t far from people’s minds offering advice in the aftermath of the swim.

Gary intends his next challenges in open water to include the target of another relay swim and Lulworth to Weymouth (a ‘benchmark swim’ for would be channel swimmers), in the near future, before looking ahead to longer solo swims. First on the list of the longer swims is Penarth to Clevedon, inspired by Clevedon ASC’s triple channel swimmer, life member and former club president, Steve Price. Fresh from his first solo win of the Long Swim Wooden Spoon, Steve met with Gary at the site of his two Bristol channel swimming finishes, the slipway, to discuss his future challenges and suggested that Penarth to Clevedon would be a good step towards his ultimate aim of crossing the English Channel.

DJS