Ask any English Channel swimmer or pilot what makes the Channel so tough, and somewhere pretty early in their answer they will mention the tide.
(Tides 101: as the moon orbits the earth, and the earth in turn orbits the sun, both exert a gravitational pull on our oceans which causes ocean levels to rise and fall in a predictable way).
When we experience tides at the beach, we see the water either coming in towards us, or going out away from us, but in reality in the channel, the water is flowing more or less sideways, either south and west towards the Atlantic, or north and east into the North Sea. So a channel swim is a bit more like swimming across a very very wide river, where the direction of the flowing water changes every 6 hours.
Track of a 21hr channel swim in 2016
Look at the 'track' of any channel swim (all except the very very fastest), and you will see something like an 'S'-shaped snake from Dover to the French coast. The swimmer is always making progress across the channel, but they are also simultaneously being pushed up or down it. There's no point trying to swim against the tide, because it's almost always faster than you can swim; with the help of a skilled pilot, the best you can do is to swim at 90 degrees to the flow. That way you're always making progress across, even if you are also being pushed sideways.
A Tidal Atlas of the Channel showing the tidal flow 4 hours before Dover's High Tide. The strongest flow (shown by the thick arrows in the centre) equates to around 2.3mph.
In the final critical miles, tides can be the saviour of a channel swim, or deliver the fatal blow to an attempt. They can push a tired swimmer on to land, or suck them away from it, leaving them either to wait for the tide to turn, or give in to cold and fatigue and climb out. It's perfectly possible, and in fact happens all the time, to get really very close to the French coast and yet still not be able to make it. On her first channel attempt British swimmer Anna Wardley (more about her below), got so close she could see sheep in the fields of France, but still couldn't make it. The tide said so.
I say all of this not to put you all to sleep, but because I've been thinking a lot recently about tides as a metaphor for the things that make life harder.
Tides don't hate us. They don't like us either. It's not our fault, and it's not theirs. It's just the way it is. We can't change it, and there's no point in trying. All I'll be able to do as a swimmer is keep going, and hope that sometime soon, my hands will hit sand.
In a very different way, Young Carers are perhaps in a similar spot. They didn't choose to have a parent or sibling with a life-changing illness, or disability, or addiction - and nor did the person they care for. Every day they are making progress, and yet also being pushed sideways by circumstance, forced to sacrifice, prioritise and make decisions way beyond their years.
Now don't get me wrong: what I'm hoping to do is temporary, voluntary, and utterly trivial compared to what these 700,000 young people have to face each day. Visit the Carers Trust website, and you won't have to go very far to find extraordinary examples of selflessness and sacrifice on the part of these young people, often with the bare minimum of support.
The number of young carers aged just 5-7 years old has increased by a staggering 83%
If anything, it's getting tougher for them. Numbers of young carers are increasing (+19% overall, with carers aged just 5-7 years old up a staggering 83% ). Those like the Carers Trust who are working to identify and support them are constantly challenged to meet the need. Just a couple of weeks ago, the Carers Trust was forced to close its award-winning online support service for young carers, Babble, simply due to a lack of cash.
It's not exactly headline news is it? "Charity needs more money". But I can't honestly think of a better reason to do this (or indeed for you to part with some cash...) than a child out there facing impossible odds, who needs to know they're not facing them alone.
A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to be part of a training camp for channel swimmers in Mallorca, where one of our coaches was record-breaking ultra-marathon swimmer Anna Wardley (if you think a channel swim is gnarly, you should read about some of the things Anna has gone on to do since that first unsuccessful channel attempt).
In preparation for our six-hour swim, Anna gave us an inspirational talk on what keeps her going at some of the darkest moments in her swims. She shared with us a quote from Harriet Beecher Stowe, the writer and anti-slavery campaigner, which is what I now think about in training when I feel crap, cold, and really don't want to swim ANOTHER length.
“When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”
I love this quote, because it reminds us that however much we can't control in our lives, we can choose what we do in response to the rough stuff. We all have our own tides. Sometimes they help us, sometimes not. All we can do is keep swimming, maybe help someone else to do the same, and hope that sometime soon we'll make it to the beach.