It was early morning in late September, off the coast of Kaş in Turkey. Watching the slightly choppy sea from a boat, the last thing I felt like doing was embarking on another 5km (3-mile) swim. Mind fog had sapped my energy, and my mood was decidedly Eeyore-like.
But as I pulled on my cap and flippers, adjusted my goggles and took the plunge, something shifted. Head in the water, the knotted feeling in my throat began to loosen. My swimming is far from sophisticated – my strokes are messy and I am mostly kicking from the knees.
Still, I manage to move forward, albeit slowly, hugging the coastline of Turkey’s Lycian Way, turning a corner and entering an area of calm. Fish glide purposefully beneath, and I’m uplifted when I see a turtle navigating around a rock on the seabed. I came to Turkey with SwimTrek, a Brighton-based company offering guided open-water swim tours.
The plan is to complete 25km over five days. On the one hand, it is a holiday; but for me, the combination of swimming and the sea has become something more than that. It began in Croatia in June 2024, eight months after my mother died unexpectedly, when a friend persuaded me to .
I had been feeling lost as I tried to come to terms with my mum not being here any more, and generally anxious, made worse by sleepless nights. Even on calm days, at times it felt difficult to breathe, the tightness in the throat unrelenting. The only thing that seemed to help was swimming, especially with the focus on the Croatia challenge.
My preparation was mostly in the pool, pretty much all of it breaststroke. I had a rude awakening on the first day of the trip when I tried to swim either breast or backstroke – the latter steering me wildly off course. On day two I was kitted out with flippers and one of the SwimTrek guides taught me the basic front crawl technique.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
