The aftermath

I wrote about the following day in an earlier post. Everyone I saw wanted to talk about the swim and take pictures and we finally made it to breakfast at about midday.

Evelyn & Dave fly the flags at Varne Ridge for those who had successful crossings.

The Australian flag at the top was for me & Duncan (who landed about 300 metres further up the Cape from me, at roughly the same time too - his swim was 11 hours 33 mins); the UK flag underneath was also for me; the Irish flag under that (even though my John claims it was for him) was actually for John Daly who had a successful crossing in 13 hours 17 mins, and the French flag (just visible behind us) was for Philippe Croizon, a quadruple amputee who completed his swim in 13 hours 28 mins and was escorted by porpoises for much of the way.

This was a Sri Chinmoy relay team waiting to swim, who hailed from various countries in Europe. I happened to have on my Sri Chinmoy t-shirt from the swim in Zurich so they were excited to see that. The team had a successful crossing on 21 September, in a time of 13 hours 41 mins.

Thanks, Mum & John.

Later in the day we went to the White Horse pub, famous for successful Channel swimmers' autographs on the walls.

It was interesting to see where people had signed their name on the wall and then returned for another crossing, and then another, with their subsequent times being squeezed in next to their name.

There is now hardly any room left on the walls so I started on a fresh patch of ceiling.




And finally we headed to the Royal Oak pub, near Varne Ridge where there was another board on the wall to sign (so many autographs!) Evelyn & Dave had thrown a party for all the swimmers, which was such a generous gesture, and we had a great afternoon.

Evelyn, Kevin, Dave & Jane