Galway girl reflects on successful crossing of English Channel

Before, during and after Alice Flood’s successful swim across the English Channel last month, she received an ocean of messages of goodwill in support of her bid to become the first Galway native to negotiate what is considered the Mount Everest of endurance swims.

One text message certainly stood out and, although it was not one offering encouragement or lauding her achievement, it nonetheless spurred her on to complete her goal of swimming from the shores of England to France. The text arrived while she was in the water.

“I was in great spirits and enjoying the buzz, having the banter with my crew and one of the best kicks I got was when I was about halfway, about seven or eight hours into the swim, and I stopped for a feed,” she recalls.

“My brother (Patrick) said ‘hey Ali, I just got a text’. I asked ‘who from?’ because they had been giving me messages of support from people the whole way through. They said it was from Vodafone and it says ‘Welcome to France’. That was such a good buzz.”

Alice completed the gruelling venture in a time of 13 hours and 53 minutes and for ten of those hours she says “everything went amazingly well”. She had set off at 9am on a beautiful day – which meant by and large her attempt would be a daylight swim – and she was feeling good.

“Then at about ten and a half hours of swimming the boat pilot (Eddie Spelling) came out and he said I need you to up the tempo for an hour,” she continues. “He said ‘I need you to give me everything you got, a full sprint for an hour’.

“You anticipate that question coming – that you will have to up the tempo at some point. I didn’t know before the swim how I would react to it and now I am wondering did I really do that. It still feels very surreal.”

The reason for the pilot’s instruction to up the pace was he was endeavouring to have Alice reach Griz Nez, which is the most outward cap of French soil. “He anticipated that the tide was on the turn and he wanted me to put the foot down to get ahead of the tide and land at the Cap, which would have been an eleven and a half-hour swim.

Alice Flood on her way to becoming the first Galway native to swim the English Channel.

“Unfortunately, everything I had wasn’t enough and the tide caught me and pulled me away. So, I missed landing on the Cap. That meant an extra two hours on the swim.”

What was worse was that Alice could see the Cap beginning to inch away from her in the distance. “In my head ‘I was oh my God, I have missed the Cap’. It is not the end of the world though – a lot of people do miss the Cap – and eventually I got to swim into Wissant Bay.”

However, it wasn’t easy. She had pretty much emptied the tank in sprinting to reach Griz Nez and now with two hours more of a swim ahead of her, the concern was that the tide would drag her tiring body into the Dover to Calais shipping lane.

“Those last two hours were complete and utter torture. I can’t even explain. Actually, I would say the last three hours were torture because I knew he (boat pilot) was trying to get me to the Cap and I literally had emptied the tank to get there.

“However, you never break a tide and the tide will always be stronger than you. So, anyway, we were now aiming for Wissant Bay but you know at that stage it was dark and all I could see was shadows of land all around me. I didn’t feel like I was getting any closer and, by this stage, your head begins to play games with you.”

Alice dug deep, fought off the demons in her head, and loaded her body up with sugar and caffeine to boost her energy levels. “It is really good to get you moving.

So, I just had to put the foot down and give it everything. I just got in at the very start of Wissant Bay, landing there in 13 hours 53 minutes – still a fully credible time.”

Indeed, it was. Alice vividly remembers those last few strokes which saw her accomplish a truly remarkable feat. By this stage, she had been joined in the water by her friend Yvon McCarthy, who had followed her into shore.

“I just kept swimming but because it is dark you can’t see anything really in front of you,” says Alice. “However, then I felt sand under my hand when I was pulling. And I tell you, that was just like unbelievable. It was pretty swallow there so I had to wade up on to the beach.

“I just sat on the beach and cried like a baby; sat in the dark, in the moonlight, and it was really beautiful. Then Yvon came wading up and she was bawling crying as well. She was shouting ‘you legend, you legend’.”

In all, the 36-year-old swam approximately 40 kilometres but she explains before any celebration could get underway, she still had to swim another 500 metres back out to the boat again. “That was pretty tough going,” she laughs.

Alice celebrates becoming the first Galway native to swim the English Channel at her accommodation in Varne Ridge in Dover.

When Alice and her crew arrived at the marina in Dover, her parents Patrick and Patricia, were waiting with both the Ireland and Galway flags flying proudly in the midnight air. “That was really nice and, of course, I started bawling crying again,” she notes.

“We went back to Varne Ridge, the trailer park where I was staying, and they have a lovely tradition of flying the national flag of whichever swimmer is successful that day. So, when I got back they had the Irish flag out and they had a banner on my mobile home saying ‘Congratulations on swimming the Channel’. I bawled like a baby again. I did a lot of crying.”

No doubt, it was an immense achievement – the success rate is only approximately 40% – and, as she says herself, she was “absolutely buzzing”. She explains, however, that this could equally be down to that for 13 hours the day previous, she had fed on nothing but sugar!

The following morning, Alice and her family enjoyed a champagne breakfast before they returned to Galway to continue the celebrations. “The reaction has been unbelievable. I can’t believe the number of messages from people I don’t know at all and they are sending me messages like ‘I don’t know you, but you are incredible’,” she continues.

“Even when I got back to Varne Ridge, and the Wifi, I had 800 messages on WhatsApp on my phone. A lot of them were in group chats among my friends and they were all there in the moment. Reading back through the threads was brilliant; reliving the whole swim again.

“The Facebook and Twitter messages, I couldn’t believe it. I knew it was a big deal but I was blown away by them. It has surpassed anything I could have dreamt of in terms of support.”

In February, Alice had taken up a new job within MSD (Pharmaceuticals) in Switzerland. Since then, she had been commuting back and forth, Dublin to Switzerland, to complete her training for the Channel. Next month, she moves over there full-time. Already, she has her eye on her next challenge.

“There is a swim there in Zurich every year. It is a 26 kilometre swim but it is freshwater as opposed to saltwater which makes it a little bit more challenging. So, it is an opposite challenge to the channel.

“That though is a lottery entry so you enter and your name has to be drawn out of a hat. If I get that, I will go for it. If I don’t, I will do something else.”

For that’s what high achievers like Alice Flood do. They conquer oceans and mountains.