Sea Swimming Blog #8

Day 39 Sea Swimming.

#8 of the blog.

My daughter woke at 4:30am and despite our efforts to get her back to sleep we were awake and opening Santa’s presents shortly after… she then insisted on opening the presents under the tree and so before we knew it our family Christmas was over by 7am.

The girls (including Stellar the cat) went back to bed but I thought I may as well go for a run as I knew I’d have a tremendous sense of well being and achievement throughout the rest of the day.

It was still dark when I got back from a cheeky 5km run to St Aubin and back so I quickly got my swimming gear and camera ready and headed to Belcroute for sunrise.

Unsurprisingly, when I arrived I was the only person there at that time… it was just starting to get light so I got changed (Santa hat at the ready) and set my camera up on a tripod ready to take a few shots.

Just as I about to get in, a group of 4 girls arrived with their paddle boards all set for a Christmas Day dip themselves.

I wished them a happy Christmas waited for them to paddle out around the corner then had my own Xmas swim before taking this photo of a beautiful 25th December sunrise.

“The one thing I remember about Christmas was that my father

used to take me out in a boat about ten miles offshore on Christmas Day,

and I used to have to swim back. Extraordinary. It was a ritual.

Mind you, that wasn’t the hard part. The difficult bit was getting out of the sack”

- John Cleese