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2008 - Aug 2 - Sept 6 - Sept 13 - Sept 20 - Sept 27 - Oct 5 - Oct 6 - Oct 26 - Oct 27 - Nov 15 - Nov 30 - Dec 6 - Dec 17 - Dec 24 - Dec 31

2009 - Jan 1 - Jan 10 - Jan 25 - Jan 27 - Feb 1 - Feb 15 - Feb 23 - Mar 22 - Mar 29 - Apr 5 - Apr 12 - Apr 19 - Apr 26 - May 3 - May 31

---------June 14 - June 21 - July 5 - July 12 - July 19 - Aug 02- Aug 16 - Aug 23 - Aug 26 - Aug 31 - Sep 6 - Oct 18

Click here to see how many metres Stuart has swum to date

Introduction

Here we go. It starts for real today. For most of my life,I have been thinking about swimming the English Channel, ever since I read one of my dad's old annuals when I was about 7 years old. It had a profile of human first's, and one of them was Captain Matthew Webb swimming from England to France. He was wearing a ridiculous victorian bathing suit, and sporting and an even dafter moustache. How accurate the moustache was, I don't know, something I will look into over the next year.

So welcome to my channel diary, and thanks for following this adventure for the next year. As I said, this channel thing has been gnawing away at me for most of my life, and although I used to be a competitive swimmer, I never actually thought about swimming it whilst I was training. Some of us talked about doing it in a relay when we were in our mid-teens, but it never got beyond that. I first thought about it in 1997 when I started work as a doctor, a young fresh-faced junior house officer at Wansbeck Hospital in Ashington in the North-East of England. I thought I might find time to train in this first year of work, but the average 100+ hours a week soon put paid to that idea. It next crossed my mind when I moved to Australia in 2002, and I was swimming under the Sydney Harbour Bridge in a sea-water pool.

However after 1 month of swimming 6 times a week, which was the most I had done since I stopped competitive swimming, I was exhausted, and told myself that it was a ridiculous idea, and I should stop contemplating such folly.

But then at the end of 2007, it's ugly head resurfaced again.

The difference this time, was my girlfriend Kathleen (Kitty), saying that if I wanted to do it, then I should stop talking about it and just book myself in and do it.

So I paid a tentative deposit to my pilot Eddie Spelling, and I asked my 2 best mates if they were up for it. Andrew said if it was not for his wife, his new baby boy Callum, his dog, his job, his love of his free-time and the fact that he could not be arsed, he would love to. He also made some comment about having been to the Commonwealth Games, and not having anything to prove after a successful swimming career. Not sure what he was getting at there. And so I asked Anthony, who told me to get out of my bubble, and get back to reality. But I could tell he was quite tempted, and after a few weeks of harassment he actually agreed, and also paid a deposit. We were booked in for the week of the 26th August 2009, and we looked forward to 2008, it was going to be an eventful year. And as I write this on 1st August 2008, it certainly has been a year full of many emotions.

The plan was to just keep fit for the first half of 2008, and start doing harder training towards August. And the year got of to a great start in January when Kitty and I got engaged. I proposed after dinner on a floating pontoon in the middle of Lake Pichola, which surrounds the beautiful Lake Palace in Udaipur, India. We had been together almost 2 years, and we both knew it was the future for us. Besides, in the previous 10 days touring Rajasthan, we had seen each other at our worst thanks to our diet of curry for breakfast, dinner and tea. We had stuck together through this, the future would be a doodle. However in June we had some terrible news. On June 14th, whilst walking home from work, Anthony's younger brother Gavin was the victim of a callous, unprovoked assault in his home town of Thornaby, England. He was in James Cook University Hospital, Middlesbrough with severe head injuries, and the medical staff did not expect him to survive. Anthony who now lived in New York, had flown to the UK immediately after he found out, and along with his mam Brenda, sister Alex, and the rest of the family, spent the next week by Gavin's bedside in the Intensive Care Unit, hoping that he would improve. Unfortunately he didn't, and Gavin died 9 days after the attack on June 23rd 2008.

Due to the violent nature of Gavin's death, his body could not be released immediately, due to legal technicalities. It was not until July 22nd, 29 days after he died that his friends and family could bury him and say goodbye. The whole episode and process has been heart-breaking for everybody involved. Kitty and I traveled to the UK for the funeral last week, which was the first time I had been home to Teesside in over 3 years. It was actually a beautiful summer day, not what you would expect in Northern England, but a far from happy day.

Watching one of my 2 best friends read a eulogy about his brother was not something I ever expected to see at this stage in my life. It was an extremely emotional day. Kathleen and I flew back to Sydney having only been in the UK for 42 hours, emotionally and physically drained. Despite having buried Gavin, the ordeal is far from over for Anthony and his family. In a few months they will have to go through the trauma of the trial of the person that attacked Gavin.

It was during our time in the UK, that Anthony and I decided that we would dedicate our English Channel swim to the memory of Gavin.