We finally meet the rest of our pod!

It's been very quiet around here of late hasn't it! We've been so busy with training and fundraising and work that we haven't updated in almost two months!

So here's what we've been up to...

We had our first training weekend in Dover with all the rest of the Aspire swimmers.  We met the rest of our team:

From left to right - Sarah, Sophie, Kay, David, Heather and Jackie

We also did our first bit of proper sea swimming in Dover harbour.  Under the instruction of the legendary Freda Streeter, we did 2 swims of 20 minutes (which turned out to be closer to 30 as the harbour wall was further away than we thought) on Saturday and a swim of 45 minutes of Sunday. Gail from "Team Spare Parts" (aka this year's reserve swimmers) took lots of pictures, which she's kindly agreed to let me share with you here.

We passed up on the opportunity to get lubed up by a stranger (we later regretted this)...

My finger providing Sarah with some inspiration of where to go...

We'll be right back!

Getting dressed afterwards proved to be a stressful and confusing experience for Sophie, whilst Kay found the whole thing very amusing!

How anyone can look this cheerful when they can't feel most of their limbs due to the cold is beyond me!

Once we'd all got all of our clothes on, we started to get warm and feel a bit happier!

We're now up to 61% of our fundraising target. As usual, everyone has been fantastically generous with their donations - thanks go to Amy & Martyn, Aileen & Neil, Mick & Olga, Chris Lacey, Aimi & Chris, Charly & Ben, Craig, Andrew and Laura (phew!).

This weekend our sexy seal outfits will be coming out to pack bags at Morrisons in Kirkstall - if you need groceries, come down and see us on Saturday!

Happy swimming!

Just Keep Swimming...

We've had a fantastic weekend of outdoor swimming practise and bucket shaking (not really, Liverpool City Council - no buckets were shaken in the making of this blog post, we promise!)!

We started early on Saturday with a trip to a beautiful lake close to Betws-y-Coed in North Wales. It was cold...

 ...but we kept our spirits up...

...and got some good swimming in!

Then the wetsuits came off...

...Sarah lasted about a minute (this minute may or may not have contained some profanity...)...

...and Soph just kept swimming!

Very admirable! It was a brrrrrr-illiant start to acclimatisation! We'll be ready in no time ;-)

Of course someone couldn't resist practising his rescue skills!

Then on Sunday we donned our stunning (read: hilarious) seal costumes and headed into Liverpool City Centre to get collecting...

...with a little help...

...and we finished having taken a fantastic £369.18 thanks to the lovely (dog-loving!) people of Liverpool, bringing our total to £1693.38! Thank you all very very much!

Busy Busy Busy!

Bloomin' heck - we've been busy bees recently.

We had another epic car boot sale adventure - we were going to the Aiport Car Boot at Leeds Bradford airport, but it turned out it was cancelled (after we'd got up at 6:30am on a Sunday)...so we went for an epic breakfast at a local greasy spoon - £1.50, with a brew. Noms!

...and eventually found our way to the Otley Car Boot.

We raised a stonking £110.46 - and returned home with a near-empty car. No idea where that 46p came from though...

Time to find more stuff to sell. Thanks again to everyone who has donated items for us to sell so far - you're all fantastic!

Sophie also held a miniature bake sale in the Engineering Department at the University of Liverpool this week - raising another £76.10 selling delicious (even if she does say so herself) cupcakes.

We've now also got a Youtube channel - we'll be posting videos of our outdoor training, our trips to Dover and our other vaguely interesting exploits. Check it out here.

Our first video is Sophie's somewhat impromptu outdoor swim (hence why she's wearing her pants and bra) in Wales a few weeks ago. The water was about 7 degrees, which seemed to bother Phurba less than it did Sophie! Brrr!

We've also got lots of exciting fundraising events coming up - check out our 'Upcoming Events' page to find out more.

Team Hoodies are here!

Our amazing team hoodies have arrived - don't they look fantastic?! We are definitely going to be the best dressed team at the first training session in Dover.

David from our team created the design - I love the seal's little smiley face.  Hopefully we'll all still be smiling like that when we finish our swim!

We do now have one very grumpy dog though...

Thanks go to Caroline and Meg at Supply Our Society - if you're looking for hoodies then they're your girls!

We've also received more generous donations from Andrew, Hannah & Tim and Becky - thank you, you lovely people!

Guest Bloggin'

We were asked by Kirsty, the Communications Manager (and Facebook supremo) over at Aspire, to write a guest post on their blog - and here it is!

Good stuff!

Car Booty!

Our 2012 fundraising has well and truly begun! So far we've attended successful car boots sales in Otley and Port Sunlight, and tried another couple in Liverpool and Birkenhead with limited success: they were cancelled!

However, we've been encouraged so far (having raised another £89), and are busy collecting plenty more booty for when the sun comes out and the fairs get busier!

And a huge thank you (many huge thank yous, in fact!) to all the lovely people who have donated - Sam, Oliver, Maria and Ingrid, Professor Hon, Jenny (good luck to you & Nat in Tanzania), Mark and Linda! Your donations have spurred us on to training like madwomen - thank you!

Training is going well - Sarah managed a mammoth 6400m IN ONE GO, and Sophie has been going to a Masters swim class where Lucy and Ryan have been putting her through her paces.  We're hoping to get back to swimming in the great outdoors really soon...brrr!

An Appeal...

Holy smokes, we're going to be swimming the Channel THIS YEAR! It's been a bit quiet round these parts of late, but now we've recovered from Christmas and burnt off all the excess mince pies and tofurkey, we're ready to throw ourselves head-first back into fundraising.

As part of our efforts, we’re going car booting. If you have any items that you would be willing to donate for us to sell on, please let us know – it doesn’t matter how big or small, and we'll even come and collect large items (if you're in the Leeds or Liverpool area, obviously!).

Are you having a New Year clear out? Do you have any unwanted Christmas presents that you don’t know what to do with? Garage positively over-flowing with stuff you don't need anymore? Then donate it to us!

You can contact us by email (saschannelswim@gmail.com) to organise collection of your items.


What else have we been up to? We spent New Year in Edinburgh with our lovely friends Alex & Jem.  We even found time to go for a swim. In the Firth of Forth. In December.

The water was a shocking 6 degrees Celcius, so it more turned into a shrieking contest than an actual swim.  I'm not sure either of us got wet any higher than our armpits...but it resulted in some pretty hilarious photos!

Before....

During...

After!