Gareth Jones: Nofio Adre Diary
To mark 12 months since Gareth's epic swim across Wales he has written an account of how it played out.
17/08/2021 PORTHCAWL & LLANELLI
12 months ago today I began the greatest physical (& psychological) challenge of my life. To swim from south to north Wales to mark my 60th year on this planet.
For the first leg of the task I was aided and abetted by Seren Jones (no relation, although her father was a close pal of mine in primary school, yes there aren't that many of us in Wales).
I remember that shortly after the picture of me & Seren was taken I went to change into my wetsuit for for the first stage, and spent 10 mins in the changing room absolutely sobbing my heart out, frankly overwhelmed by the fact that this whole project had actually come together.
I gathered myself together (after giving myself a stern talking-to). I then jumped in a boat that took me a kilometre out into a very rough sea off the coast of Porthcawl, and frankly body surfed my way back to the shore. The wave and the tide carried me towards the shore at a ferocious rate. It was a hell of a start, like being shot out of a cannon. (I know what that feels like because I *actually was shot out of a cannon for a TV show back in 2000).
Having swum back to shore, I was taken to Llanelli where I swam 3 circuits of the North Dock and that was me done for the day. Distance swum on day 1 was 3.1km.
18/08/21 PARC BRYN BACH & LLANDEGFEDD
Day 2 of the swim - another 2 swims in one day. The first one in Parc Bryn Bach in Tredegar. Just 1km across a verrry weedy lake. The distance wasn't a problem, but the weeds meat it required much more effort, like trying to swim through an upturned hairbrush.
Later that day the first substantial challenge, to swim the entire length of the Llandegefedd reservoir and then back to the start. This swim was the nearest one to where my father and grandfather were born, so this swim was continuing to be somewhat of an emotional experience. The sun shone, the water was warm, I successfully completed the swim in both directions.
Total swum on day 2 was 5.1km.
Total distance so far 8.1KM.
Little did I know at this point what was about to happen to me as a result of the 1st 2 days swimming, Things were about to go horribly wrong.
19/08/21 BRIDGEND
Whilst my 2nd day’s swimming went well, that night things got rather unpleasant. After a hearty meal and 2 pints with the crew in a hotel in Bridgend I hit the sack ready for day 3 of the swim.
I woke up in the middle of the night in utter agony, stomach cramps and a cold sweat. After 2 hours of this eventually I threw up what felt like my entire body weight, and then the same again….. and again. I was now as weak as a puppy and in no fit state to swim the Llys Y Fran reservoir in Pembrokshire. I called my director Huw Erddyn and explained. The crew acted decisively and rearranged the day’s schedule.
Seren would go off and do the interviews that I was supposed to do on that day whilst my great pal Alex who was with me for this part of the challenge helped me gather my things, frankly I was so weak at this point that simply walking to car was an arduous task. Alex drove me to the next hotel in Carmarthen where I would try and recover from being so very sick
Whilst it is impossible to know exactly why I had become ill, the likely explanation is that I had probably swallowed something unpleasant whilst swimming in either the North Dock in Llanelli, (although this is unlikely because Seren who had swim one of the three laps with me was perfectly well). My suspicion is that the damage had been done when I swam the lake in Parc Bryn Bach. Whilst it looked beautiful, the whole area around the lake was covered in luminous green goose shite, and the chances are that the water would have been full of it too.
The team were extraordinary and immediately launched me into a programme of rebuilding the calorie deficit I was now suffering from. At this point though I couldn’t face eating anything, but could just about manage to sip sports drinks and any other fluid I could get down. By early afternoon I started to feel a bit more like myself (or rather a version of myself that had just done 12 rounds with Mohammad Ali if I’m honest). By the afternoon I was eating sandwiches and by the early evening I could manage a small meal. But would I be able to eat enough to fuel me up for the next day’s challenge….which would be the greatest distance I have ever attempted to swim?
20/08/21 AFON TEIFI
Luckily my 3rd day’s swim was scheduled to start at tea-time. This was because the plan was for me to swim along the river Teifi starting at Cilgerran and swim with the flow of the river as the tide carried it out to Aberteifi.
Despite meticulous planning and scheduling when I started the swim the water in the river was completely still, which meant I would be getting almost no assistance from the flow at all. I felt OK, albeit uncertain of how long I would be strong enough to swim for, but off I went.
The river was shallow in places with of of sharp rocks inches from my face and lots of overhanging branches that dropped great lumps of wood in my path.
Dilwyn my safety officer escorted me in a canoe, following a path being scouted ahead by our navigating pilot Dave in his canoe ahead, directing me to avoid all the hazards, whilst Seren stopped me every 45 minutes to top me up with energy gels and as much Ribena as I could drink, rehydration was crucial at this point.
After a couple of hours of swimming the river widened and started to taste different in my mouth, I could now taste the salt in the water, the river was becoming an estuary.
We came round a corner and I saw a bridge ahead. I asked Dilwyn how much further it was and he said, “Oh just another 4 kilometres”. I honestly felt like stopping at this point but Dilwyn pointed out that over the last half-an-hour I had almost doubled the distance I had swam that day as the tide was really starting to move, and carrying me with it.
By now though the light was fading, and I was tiring. Within what felt like minutes it was very nearly pitch black, so dark in fact that in order to know where I was aiming for the crew set up some TV location lights at the end point. I felt like an ancient mariner navigating by a distant star, and that star looked a long, long way away.
I gritted my teeth and swam on and eventually after an Herculean effort made it to end point to be greeted by the crew and the warm smile of my pal Alex who swaddled me in a warm swim robe and supplied me with sandwiches. I’d done it, completed another stage, and just swam over 8km, by far the greatest distance I had ever swum in one attempt. However because of the day I’d missed swimming due to food poisoning we were around 4km behind schedule.
Would I be able to make that up in order to achieve the task of swimming some 60Km by the time I reached Conwy in the distant north?
22/08/21 CABAN COCH
After managing to bounce back fairly quickly from being poorly during the south Wales leg of my mission to swim from south Wales to north, it was now time for me to take on mid-Wales.
This was the section of the challenge that I knew was going to be difficult, the most difficult because it meant swimming across some truly giant reservoirs, starting with Caban Coch in the Elan Valley.
I vividly remember during the recce seeing this monster from the top of the dam and noticing how turbulent, cold, deep, dark and frankly frightening this body water looked to me and thinking “I don’t think I can do this”, frankly it put the fear of God in me (and I’m not a God-fearing man).
Luckily for this section of the journey I had a secret weapon, my coach for the mid-Wales section: Huw Jack Brassington. Huw is a renowned and very capable ultra-athlete, something that I am not.
Huw had taken part and completed some of the most arduous races imaginable, and I was hoping that his unstoppable enthusiasm and ability to carry on when regular humans would simply crumble would rub off on me.
Just being in Huw’s company was making me feel positive, he is a ray of sunshine to spend any time with, so simply hanging out with him made me feel confident, despite the reality of the sheer scale of the challenge I was now facing.
You can’t rock up to any reservoir and jump in, they are dangerous places to swim for obvious reasons: their size, the depth of the water, and the dangers of hidden syphons underwater which create lethally powerful currents that risk dragging me into hidden underwater machinery that would slice me to ribbons before drowning me. Yep, this was genuinely risky.
In order to get special permission for me to do this Dwr Cymru (Wales Water) insisted that in addition to our safety boat that they supplied a safety boat of their own too. Having a 2nd boat with me on the water actually made me feel more nervous, it seemed to add to the gravity, the severity of the challenge, but Huw’s incorrigible good humour alleviated my nerves…..a little.
Remember; the plan was for me to swim 60KM during the trip, as it was marking my 60th birthday, but because I was a little behind on my target it meant that I would start at one end of the reservoir and swim towards the dam but turn around before I got close to the dangers of the reservoir wall and then swim halfway back towards the opposite shore. This would add an additional kilometre or two to my swim and help me make up the distance deficit created from being unable to swim in one of the locations in the south because I had got ill.
Whilst the reservoir had looked utterly terrifying during the recce, today the sun was shining and the water was pretty calm, but it was still utterly massive, the dam wall looked a looong way away, because it was. I filled myself full of fuel (sandwiches & crisps) and got into our safety boat which took me to a part of the reservoir where the water was deep enough for me to tumble overboard into the water without any danger.
I started swimming, and in 45 minutes I had despatched nearly 2 kilometres. I suffer from time-to-time with neural labyrinthitis, a swelling in the inner ear, probably caused by spending so much time in the water during my training. This results in “Oh my god I feel like I’ve drunk 8 pints” levels of dizziness, not pleasant.
When you start swimming and find your rhythm you can keep going and going and going, but when I paused for a moment to check my position I lifted my head out of the water and the whole universe seemed be swinging from +45 degrees to -45 degrees, everything was moving. All I could to is to push through it, something that I had learned from Huw Jack Brassington. It worked, I swam on, and eventually reached the dam, and turned around to head back for the additional distance.
At this point Huw joined me in the water to swim the next kilometre or so, and help keep me going. This may have been one of the happiest moments for me on the challenge. I felt like I was in a pod of dolphins, as my stroke (racing breaststroke) raised me above and dove me below the water, all the time with a companion alongside me matching my stroke, we were both smiling and laughing. Huw is a very strong swimmer, but his usual stroke is the crawl, but so adaptable is Huw that he mimicked my style and the two of us swam together with glee and determination.
After a while Huw returned to the boat leaving me to complete the swim on my own. I had just swum another 3.7KM, bringing the total distance so far to 19.8 KM.
However tomorrow I would have to tackle a reservoir twice as long, and twice as deep.
23/08/2021 CLAERWEN
Buoyed by my success in crossing Caban Coch reservoir yesterday I was about as ready as I could be to tackle Clarewen reservoir in the Elan Valley. This one was a true giant, the biggest of all the reservoirs in Powys. There is more water in this one reservoir than all the other reservoirs in the Elan Valley combined. My task was to swim the entire length of Claerwen.
Having done the interviews that told the story of the flooding of the Elan Valley to create the reservoirs, it was now time for me to get into my wetsuit and start the swim.
While I was changing the Dwr Cymru safety boat team set about getting their craft into the water. Unfortunately, because their boat trailer’s wheels got stuck in the muddy gravel at the reservoir’s shore this took longer than expected, a lot longer. I was psyched and ready to go, but had to remain in this state for over an hour as the Dwr Cymru chaps struggled to deal with the predicament that they were in. Luckily the mighty Dilwyn Sanderson-Jones and Dave, our safety team; applied their considerable skills, took charge of the situation and finally overcame the problem.
Right, finally time for me to get in our boat and sail across the reservoir to the opposite end and swim back towards the end with the dam. I see reservoirs now as being shaped rather like an open hand, the rivers that feed and fill the reservoir being the fingers, and the dam a straight line at the wrist.
We headed out across the water, and even in a motorised RIB at full cruising speed it seemed to take aaaaages. This one truly was a monster. Eventually Dilwyn paused at a point at the mouth of one of the “fingers” and told me this is where I would start. Being mindful that we still were behind target on the distance I needed to swim I urged Dilwin to carry on up one of the wider fingers, so I would have further to swim, he reluctantly did so.
Maybe it was chutzpah on my part or just plain blind ignorance but this is what I wanted to do, regardless of whether I knew I could actually manage to swim the extra distance.
Claerwen is cold, driven by the fact that it was so very deep, so to avoid all the body heat being sucked out of me I wore an extra layer, a wet-suit waistcoat under my outer wetsuit. It seemed to work, I don’t remember feeling particularly cold on this swim despite the water being about 14C, perhaps it was by this point I had become quite acclimatised to cooler water temperatures.
It’s very hard to judge distance when you are swimming, being at water level gives you a very limited perspective, all you can do is look for markers on the shore parallel to my path and set a target to swim too, then another, then another. After what seemed like ages swimming along a narrow section, the body of water opened out and I finally got a sense of the scale of this huge beast.
From time to time it was very important for the filming of the TV show that we got some “clean” shots from the drone camera of me alone, in the middle of wherever I was swimming. To achieve this our safety boat (and the Dwr Cymru safety boat too) had to move well away from me, so they don’t appear in the shot. This meant that everywhere I swam, at some point, I would be left completely alone in the water for a while. You’d think that this would be a little daunting, scary even, alone in a vast wet wilderness, but actually I rather enjoyed it. I remember whilst I was preparing for the swim by doing countless lengths of a swimming pool imagining what it might feel like to be alone in the middle of a vast body of water, far from the shore. The reality was that I was never truly alone, the drones were my eternal companions a “Sputnik” (fellow traveller) along for the whole journey with me, as long as I could see, or rather hear the drone, I felt quite safe.
I remember some 20 years ago deciding to walk across Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, making my way towards the KL Tower. The trouble is that the KL Tower was some 420 metres tall, the upshot of this is that being so big it will always appear to be closer than it actually is. That was a hell of a long walk, and this was proving to be a hell of a long swim.
The dam wall in the distance didn’t seem to be getting any closer, and I was starting to slow down and take ever more frequent breaks to catch my breath. My superb support crew realised this and decided that I needed more fuel, so energy gel packs, Ribena and sandwiches were passed over the side of the boat to me. Have you ever tried eating a meal whilst treading water? It’s not easy, but I was starving and so demolished my prawn sandwich like a Rhyl seagull stealing your chips, CHOMP, CHOMP, gone.
I carried on, but I was certainly tired now, my pace had dropped despite refuelling, so there was only one thing for it, "launch Huw Jack Brassington". Having Huw swim alongside me would help me push on.
Huw joining me in the water would lift my spirits, and the way in which he entered the water made me roar with laughter. Y’know when you leave a boat in the middle of open water, you must enter the water with great caution, Huw in his inimitable way simply threw caution to the wind. I watched from alongside the boat as he raised a wetted finger into the air to judge the wind strength and direction, and leaped vertically out of the boat and immediately went into a tight tuck to “splash-bomb” me as he entered. I love that man so much, such energy, and I fed off that energy.
We powered on alongside each other for a kilometre or two, Huw staying with me right until we got as close to the dam wall we were allowed to get.
I left the water, exhausted & elated from having swum 6.5KM across one of the most daunting bodies of water of my journey.
The total distance I had swum since starting in Porthcawl was now over 25KM, almost halfway.
I felt invincible. Nothing ahead could be more difficult than this had been.
Little did I know how wrong I was.
25/08/21 ABERDYFI
I am much happier swimming in fresh water than the sea, however there are advantages to swimming in estuarial waters, they have a tide, which, if you swim with will propel you along at a faster pace than you can cover in still water.
To be able to swim for 3 or 4 hours a day I was now on a strict regime of eating around 5,000 calories a day. Breakfast, as they say is “the most important meal of the day”, so every day before leaving the hotel I had to eat as much as I could, and then cram another sandwich in immediately before I started swimming. However for some reason breakfast in the lovely little hotel I was staying in in Machynlleth took forever, so I left the hotel somewhat later than I had planned, and then hit horrible traffic on the drive to Aberdyfi where I would be swimming today.
This was a major problem, because I was relying on explicit timing to coincide with high tide, so I would get the benefit of the flow in today’s swim, which would be from the sea at Aberdyfi up the river Dyfi. I felt like an unreliable member of staff who had been caught clocking in late.
I warmed up my muscles and got into my wetsuit as rapidly as possible, but the high tide had already passed which meant I was going to have to work harder than expected towards the end of this stage in order to continue to make up the lost distance from when illness had forced me to miss out an entire reservoir in south Wales. We were still behind the target distance I was supposed to have swum by this point.
I walked up the beach and slipped into the rapidly moving salty water and headed downstream, inland. It was like swimming on a motorway, the current thrust me past the jetty, between boats, missing buoys by centimetres, I was flying, 2 KM dispatched in what felt like an instant. Because of the late start it wasn’t long before the speed of the river was now beginning to slow down and it wouldn’t be long before I reached slack water.
On an extreme challenge like this, you have to start fit, but because of the exercise regime of swimming for so long every day you get fitter and fitter, until eventually you start to tire. I was fit, fighting fit at this point, and despite the water slowing down I wanted to carry on, so I did. We swam/sailed past the point at which I was supposed to have got out, I switched my stroke from racing breaststroke to crawl to maximize the distance I could do today, but eventually was told by the safety team that we had to stop, because the water was now too shallow for our RIB to be able to sail in without bottoming out. I was hauled out of the water into the boat to return to shore.
Violet had joined me for this section of the challenge. I vividly remember arriving back at the quay to see her proud glowing smile to greet me having successfully completed another stage of the swim. This made me feel like a superman, her Superman.
Today I’d swum another 6.5KM (in record time thanks to the tide) the total now was 32.3 KM. I was halfway. I had almost completed the mid-Wales section, and tomorrow I was scheduled to swim in one of the most beautiful places in Wales, this next bit was going to be easy wasn’t it?
Well…………
26/08/21 TAL Y LLYN - MWYNGIL
This was a swim I had been looking forward to since we’d done the recce a month previous. Llyn Mwyngil is just beautiful, sitting at the foot of Cadair Idris, and on occasion as smooth as glass reflecting the Welsh mountains on its mirror-like surface. It’s not a massive lake, still a good size mind you, about 1.5km, so in order to stay on target of swimming 60KM in total during my swim to celebrate my 60th birthday I would have to swim right across it, and then turn around and swim back to the start, no problem surely?
As soon as I entered the lake I realised this might be trickier than I had imagined. Llyn Mwyngil isn’t deep and the weeds that were growing on the lake bed reached all the way up to the surface. It was more like hacking your way through a dense jungle than swimming in open water. I kept adjusting my route to try and find deeper water where I was clear of the weeds. Eventually as I worked towards the centre of the lake the water was deeper and the weeds were less of an issue, at last I was able to find my rhythm and charged towards the far end of the lake.
I made it to the end aware that I had just had to work much harder than I had expected for what should have been a relatively easy swim. All I had to do now was turn around and head back to the start point. The support boats were not the usual motorised RIB but instead for this lake we were using shallow-draught canoes which would cope with the lack of depth to the water, but even so Dilwyn, Dave in the safety boats and Huw Erddyn & Huw Jack Brassington in the camera boat found that paddling them was tough going, like dragging a shovel through a field of wheat.
Nevertheless, the team forged ahead of me, plotting a line where the obstructions were manageable, just. I followed their lead and eventually arrived back at the jetty looking like Marvel Comics’ “Swamp-Thing”, half human, half plant, I was covered in tangled pond-weed and relieved to have finally completed the swim.
This was the only swim scheduled for today, just as well because it had utterly tired me out, I had just swum another 3KM bringing the total distance to 35.3KM. This was followed by being given a thorough sports massage to tone my muscles for a very serious challenge tomorrow.
Before that though we drove to Bala and to the Urdd’s Glan-llyn Centre. Glan-llyn is on the banks of a lake at Bala, the clue is in the name: Glan-llyn means “on the banks of the lake”. This is a youth centre I had stayed at as a boy a couple of times when I was in primary school. As a lad I was a member of Urdd Gobaith Cymru (its full title) means “The League Of Welsh Hope” a youth organisation created to allow youngsters to enjoy outward-bound activities and social events through the medium of the Welsh language. Being a Welsh speaker in the 1970s wasn’t cool unlike today, but the Urdd went a long way to changing that and it was something I was proud to be part of.
That night I would be visiting, and sleeping, at the centre for the first time in 50 years, frankly I found this as exciting as my task for tomorrow of swimming across the largest natural lake in Wales.
I had to prepare very carefully for this, this was going to be a big one, physically and emotionally.
27/08/2021 LLYN TEGID
Llyn Tegid, is known by many as “Bala Lake”, this is incorrect, like referring to the River Thames as “The London River”. It is a place I know well. As a boy I had visited there many times with my family as it is only 40 miles from where I grew up in Flintshire. It is a vast, beautiful glacial lake, with its own weather system that has caught out many a visitor whilst on the open water. The last time I was there I took Violet & our 2 boys on a canoeing trip in a May that felt as cold as January…in the arctic. It’s deep too, deeper even than the Claerwen reservoir, at some 43 meters.
Having been given the tour of Glan-llyn Urdd centre yesterday I was excited to be staying there overnight, but what I didn’t realise was that I would be staying there alone, completely alone, Huw Antur the boss there showed me where the kitchen and facilities were and left me with keys and the entry codes for the doors. This was weird. Feeling somewhat lonesome and hungry (I was constantly hungry during the weeks of swimming) I headed into Bala to get supplies for breakfast and to eat an evening meal that would fuel me for tomorrow’s swim. I found a lovely family run Italian restaurant and ordered a seafood pasta meal in Welsh, the waiter apologised for not being able to speak Welsh, somewhat unusual in this part of the country I must admit. When I asked if they could do an "Insalata Triclore" as a starter the waiter apologised again, for not being able to speak Italian either, perhaps I should have tried Guajarati or Klingon, although my command of those languages is somewhat limited.
Fully-fuelled I headed back to Glan-llyn, where I had a couple of hours work to do publishing the latest edition of my car podcast Gareth Jones On Speed, which the rest of the team had kindly recorded an episode for me without me being in it. It was a treat for me to be able to listen to the show like a regular subscriber for once, not knowing what was in the show. I will forever be grateful to Zog, Alex & Sarah for doing that for me, I had rather a lot on my plate with the swim and didn’t have any spare bandwidth to record and edit an episode myself. Having done the show since 2005 I didn’t want to disappoint our listeners by missing an edition, and the team didn’t let me down by delivering a ready-to go show.
Having finished work I jumped into bed to get plenty of sleep before the big swim in the morning. It didn’t happen, three hours of trying to sleep as the only person in a large empty building was somewhat spooky, so I gave up, got dressed and decided to make myself useful. The Nofio Adre TV crew had given me a GoPro camera to record video diary entries for the programme, so I went outside to record a piece about Glan-llyn and the challenge of attempting to swim Llyn Tegid. It worked as a kind of re-set and eventually, probably about 3am I managed to finally get some sleep.
Morning came with the familiar layer of mist sitting over the lake, it looked very foreboding in the early hours, but as the sun warmed the water's surface the mist disappeared, revealing the stunning beauty of the lake, but there was a problem. We had been forewarned that there was a very real risk of the presence of blue-green algae in the lake, and this week there had indeed been a truly massive bloom of the toxic cyanobacteria.
Exposure to blue-green algae can cause Diarrhoea, nausea or vomiting; skin, eye or throat irritation; and allergic reactions or breathing difficulties. I was given the clear option of not swimming in this, but there was absolutely no way I was going to miss this swim. To limit my exposure to the algae, which was at its most visible around the edge of the lake, I entered the water from the end of a long jetty at Glan-llyn and set off from the Llanuwchllyn end towards the Bala end. The sun was shining, but at this point the wind was blowing and the water was rough, I was getting slapped in the face by the water with wave after wave. Llyn Tegid can be a hostile beast. I was nervous about swimming this one, perhaps because I knew it too well, I knew exactly how big it is and how deep it is.
3 things come to mind about swimming Tegid:
1: It is the home of a rare fish, an unique species of arctic char called the Gywniad (I didn’t spot any as they live in the cold darkest depths of the lake).
2: It is said that there is also a mysterious monster living in the lake, known as “Teggie” (the Welsh equivalent of “Nessie”, who kindly chose not to show them-self whilst I swam.
And 3: My father almost drowned in this lake when he was sailing a small sailing dingy. The boom swung, hit dad on the head, knocked him for six and threw him into the cold water. Despite being a strong swimmer and an experienced yachtsman my father struggled in his oilskins to stay afloat, but with great effort and grit and determination (that I’m happy to have inherited from him) he hauled himself halfway back onto the boat. Our neighbour Cyril dived into the water swam out to the boat and came to dad’s rescue.
All these things passed through my mind as I swam, and swam and swam. As I approached 2/3rds of the way I heard a familiar voices calling from the lakeside, my loving brother & sister John Bryn & Carys calling out to me. To be honest I’m not sure if this actually helped, it’s hard to swim with a lump in your throat and smiling, but I pressed on.
Ever since I conceived of the idea of swimming across Wales I knew that the whole thing would revolve around swimming Llyn Tegid. I had trained myself towards being able to swim 6km, and I knew that if I could swim 6km across the largest natural lake in Wales, then I could swim any body of water in Wales.
As I approached the end of the swim I have to admit to being weary, perhaps it was because of the short night’s sleep, perhaps because I hadn’t paced myself particularly well at the start, but I was close to not making it. The final section of the swim was particularly hard, and the lake here was as busy as Oxford Street on Christmas Eve, with so many tourists enjoying activities on the water.
I hauled myself out of the water to be greeted by my wonderfully supportive brother and sister, I wanted to hug them, but I had been given strict instructions not to do so until I had been completely washed down with fresh clean water to eliminate the risk of cross-contamination having been exposed to blue-green algae for several hours in the water. Every time my head went underwater I could see the algae everywhere. Swimming Tegid had been like swimming through a snow-storm.
As I stood on the land, I broke my heart, sobbing with joy, this had been huuuge for me. My great friend Steve Allan Jones was there to greet me too, and I will long remember the feeling of utter satisfaction as I allowed myself to enjoy this fine moment with some of my favourite people with a small bottle of beer.
I’d done it, swam Tegid, added another 6km to my swim bringing the total to 41.3KM. It felt like I was home, but I still had another 20km to swim before I truly was.
30/08/21 TRAWFYNNYDD
I’d just had two days off, well to be honest just one really as on the 2nd “day off” I spent a large part of swimming around Llyn Padarn, not the whole lake just one section of it, as Gethin our athletic energetic cameraman did some pretty tricky underwater filming of me as we picked up some shots to use in the title sequence and trailers for the programme.
Time to take on another lake or rather a reservoir, Trawsfynnydd, another vast body of open water in north Wales. Llyn Trawsfynydd is best known as the reservoir next to the Trawsfynydd Maentwrog nuclear power plant. Looming large over the lake in all its cubist, brutalist glory the power station was actually de-commissioned in 1991 but still looks pretty intimidating. There are all sorts of urban legends about how the proximity of the plant to the lake heats the water up and results in the fish in the lake growing large, but they are just that, tittle-tattle. Although having said that the plant did actually raise the temperature of the water while it was in use. The lake or reservoir was used to cool the nuclear reactor, rather like a large radiator or heat-exchanger, and some people even think that the water is radioactive, but it isn’t of course, well not as far as I know, but I didn’t have a Geiger counter with me to check.
My coach for the north Wales leg of my epic swim was Caris Bowen, who is one of the most impressive people I have ever had the privilege of getting to meet. She became a mother twice, as a teenager, is a cancer survivor and two years ago she couldn’t swim at all. But in her fight back from her illness she went on a get fit regime that has turned her into a super-athlete. Everything about Caris is beautiful, her smile, her accent, her physique and her outlook on life. She was exactly the sort of powerhouse I needed around to give me the psychological boost that I would need to complete the 3rd and final leg of my long journey swimming across a number of lakes in north Wales.
Caris & the rest of the team and I all jumped in the safety boat and sailed across to the far end of the reservoir where I started my swim. I’m pretty sure that Caris was more than a little baffled by my choice of stroke, most long-distance swimmers use the crawl or “The Australian Crawl” to give it its correct title, a stroke that was used by aboriginal people in Oz and some Native Canadians. This technique was picked-up by competition swimmers only as recently as the late 1800s. The crawl is faster and more efficient than my racing breaststroke, but that was the way I liked to swim, and it had worked for me…..so far.
I had to stay hydrated while I swam, which meant I consumed volumes of water (actually very weak Ribena) while on the water, which meant that every 45 minutes or so my bladder got full and I needed to wee. This is something that I had to do in my wetsuit, in the water. Usually I would “throttle back” from my maximum pace whilst my arms rested on the small float that I towed behind me. It takes a while to get started, but with sufficient concentration I am able to relieve myself. Caris noticed that I had slowed down and was resting on my float and was calling from the safety boat for me to get on with it (she proved to be a very hard task master) I called back to explain I was about to have a leak, expecting Caris to politely cast her gaze elsewhere but I will long remember her standing there on the boat, hands on hips, waiting for me to “get on with it”. It is very hard trying to wee with a beautiful young woman fixing her gaze on you.
Regardless of the lack of privacy I was truly enjoying this swim, but again it was a difficult one. Such is the shape of the lake and the fact that the water in it these days drives underwater hydroelectric turbines Llyn Trawsfnydd is full of strong currents. These powerful flows were either working against me or across me, doing its best to drive me into one of the phalanxes around the main body of the lake, I had to fight hard to stay on track. At one point focusing so hard on making progress I didn’t spot an underwater crag that reached up to the surface and cracked my hand on it.
Despite the best efforts of the lake, fighting the currents, and another bout of vestibular neuritis which meant I was dizzy again for a much the time I was swimming, I eventually made it to the end point.
Boom another 4km done bringing my total to almost 46km.
Bit-by-bit I was inching closer to home, tomorrow I would be swimming in a lake that would be the closest on this trip to where I was born.
31/08/21 LLYN BRENIG
Llyn Brenig sits high on the Denbigh moors, it is the 4th largest lake in Wales, and another that I had to conquer to complete my task of swimming from south to north Wales. Despite successfully having swum some other giants over the last couple of weeks I was under no illusion that this one was going to be easy. When you see pictures of Brenig you will notice that it is surrounded by wind turbines, so it is clearly windy where this reservoir is, and because of the height it is and it is cold.
I noticed how cold the water was the moment I got in, I felt it trickle down my back as my wetsuit filled, I shivered. After about 45 minutes of swimming I paused to take on fluids, release fluids and asses how far I had got so far, it was a disappointing: just one …and a bit kilometres. Caris barked at me to get a crack on, and I did, but for some reason I was making slow progress, the bouts of dizziness were hitting me as the wind whipped up waves that slapped my face.
This was bloody hard, it was like swimming through molasses. Perhaps because I was starting to run out of steam after 2 weeks of relentless swimming, perhaps because the reoccurrence of bouts dizziness was sapping my energy, perhaps the low temperature of the water and having to battle with the waves whipped up by the high winds, or perhaps because psychologically I felt like I was almost home. In truth it was likely the combination of all those factors that meant that this particular swim proved to be almost impossible for me.
In a desperate act to try and make quicker progress when Caris joined me in the water I switched to crawl, unfortunately my directional abilities when swimming crawl are nowhere near as good as when I swim racing breaststroke and somewhat bizarrely change of style had swung me ‘round 180 degrees without realising it. I was now swimming in completely the wrong direction, I had actually made things worse for myself.
This was it, the lowest point of the entire swim, I wanted to give up, I couldn’t go on any more, not one stroke. The end didn’t seem to be getting any nearer, but the continued encouragement from Caris and the crew and the psychological training that I had from Dr Ioan Rees before I started this journey proved invaluable, I simply had to carry on, so I did.
It is noticeable that when I dragged myself out of the water at the end of this particular swim that this was the only occasion in which I didn’t raise both my arms in celebration, I knew that I had only just made it.
Adding this 3.5km today had been a struggle. My total distance now was 49.5km. I was still a way from completing my challenge.
01/09/21 PADARN, GWYNANT, MYBYR.
September started with a very challenging day, I would have to do something I had never attempted before, 3 lakes in one day. All 3 at the foothills of Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon as we used to call it).
Beautiful, mystical Llyn Padarn would be the first leg. I know this lake well. I'd had one of my first tastes of open water swimming there a few years back, when my great friend Dr Steve Summers loaned me a wet suit and encouraged me to join him in swimming a section of it. But today I would have to swim its entire intimidating length, and that was just for starters.
At this point in the project we had a stills photographer with us to capture shots of me to use in publicity for the programme so the start of the swim was delayed whilst I lolled about in the shallows whilst the necessary shots were taken, then off I swam.
It seemed that the difficulties of yesterday’s swim were behind me, no massive waves, no dizziness, the benign splendour of the lake encouraging me on my mission.
I will never forget getting to the midway point of this lake and pausing to take it all in, with the magnificence of Eryri (Snowdonia) overlooking me, gosh I’m a lucky so and so, this was lovely.
In what seemed like no time at all I reached the other end of the lake, the 2nd film crew and the photographer were all there to capture my moment of triumph. But celebrations were brief. I’d dispatched 3. 2km with relative ease, but then I had to repeat the task in 2 other lakes before the day was out. Having learned that trying to get into a wet suit that was already wet was a difficult and unpleasant experience I chose to leave it on, albeit undone to the waist with the arms of the suit wrapped around my midriff like an F1 driver between race sessions.
I shovelled as much food as I could into my belly and got out of my wetsuit for the drive to the next lake. Llyn Gwynant.
Gwynant sits in the middle of a windswept valley, and the wind was whistling. Luckily on this occasion the wind was behind me, and so made progress through the water easier than I had hoped, Soon I’d dashed off another 1.4km. I reached the far extreme of the lake and jumped into the canoe for the ride back to base. On the return journey Dilwyn my steadfast and strong safety boat skipper was struggling to make headway against the wind with me on board his Canadian canoe, so much so, that halfway across he elected to drop me off at the side and allow me to walk the final section around the lake to the car. Time to refuel, this time probably the tastiest cold pasta meal I ever remember devouring, supplied by one of my oldest friends Carol Summers. God that was good.
When I arrived at the 3rd and final lake for the day I was frankly knackered, but during the time we were waiting for the arrival of a paddle boarder joining me for this section I fell into a deep and restful sleep in the front seat of the car. I woke to hear that the paddle boarder Carys Owen had arrived. (Not to be confused with the similarly named Caris Bowen who was my coach for the entire north Wales section of the swim). We did the interview about how paddle boarding had taken off over the last 12 months and then I jumped into Dilwyn’s canoe to take me to the far end of the lake where I would start my swim back across the lake.
This was one of those occasions where the position of the sun dictated the shots we wanted to get from the cameras on the boat, and on the tripod camera on land, and the drone camera too. This part of Wales is just stunning, as are the 45 other officially designated “Area Of Outstanding Natural Beauty” in my glorious homeland. You’d pay a lot of money to create these images in CGI. Our backdrop was real.
I felt really good, re-set after my nap and frankly desperate to get back in the water. It’s a funny thing, but if ever you have been out on long walks for 3 or 4 days, on day one you are stiff when you stop and starting is hard, on day two you struggle to get going, but your breaks are getting shorter, you feel keen to get going again, and by day 3 your legs simply won’t let you stop. This had happened to me, I felt I needed to be back on my task. I had become at my happiest and most comfortable when I was in the water, I’d had that feeling for over a week now, this swim had changed me.
Unfortunately, when I got in I realised just how shallow the water was, nowhere deep enough for my usual underwater (ahem) power stroke where my two arms drag front-to-back beneath me and sweep to my hips. There were weeds again, no not the weeds, I want to swim. It was impossible to even sweep my arms out to the side without slapping what felt like a field of wet cabbage……. in lob scouse.
All I could do was roll onto my back, and flap about somewhat in the style of a nice eighty-something year-old lady, you know the sort you see every now and again, usually wearing a floral swim cap, making steady but slow progress through the water. Just lovely. Yeah swimming is good for you.
There I was adopting this sloppy shallow backstroke. If only I could have been swimming properly, but conditions didn’t allow it. You might think why not start somewhere nearer the middle of the lake, where It would be deeper? Remember, I had set a target of swimming 60km to mark my 60th birthday, which meant I had to grab every metre I could of each swim, to make sure that I maintained on track of reaching my distance target by the end.
Eventually the water became deep enough, just, for me to get into cruise mode and power my way across the final lake of the day, I loved this final swim for today, because it made me work hard. And y’know: more effort in, the more you get out of it.
Llyn Mymbyr had just about given me 1.5km, my total was now 55.6km.
Tomorrow, if all goes well I would be swimming another two utterly extraordinary lakes, not beneath, but up high in the mountains.
03/09/21 LLYN LYFANT & LLYN EIGIAU
When I started plotting this journey I wanted to make across the waters of Wales, I chose, the biggest lake, the deepest lake, lakes with the best stories.
Today, first I would swim the highest lake in Wales, it’s not very big, at all but an important part of my journey.
I saw my trip as being like stepping stones in reverse, jumping from puddle to puddle. Llyn Llyfant isn’t much more than a puddle, it is swimming pool size, but I just had to swim it. It is some 815m above sea level on Carnedd Llewelyn, the 2nd highest mountain in Wales, only 200m lower than the summit of Yr Wyddfa.
It is up in the heavens. To get there we enlisted help from local farmer and TV star Gareth Wyn Jones (I know its confusing isn’t it?) he’s Gareth Jones Y Ffermwr (The Farmer) I’m Gareth Jones Teledu (Television).
We headed up the mountain in a convoy of quads relying on "other” Gareth’s intimate and expert knowledge of his mountain to get us to the lake. If you’ve ever been up to the summit of Yr Wyddfa, you’ll know that even on the most glorious of days at sea level, up there you are in the clouds, the mist and the fog, it is often the same on the Carneddau range.
After 2 hours climbing the mountain in the vehicles we paused to consider whether this was still a good idea or not. It was blowing a gale, it was raining horizontally, and we were utterly blinded by the mist.
I was relatively warm myself, as I was already wearing my wet suit and my big red towelling-lined swim robe. All the crew were dressed for the worst weather, but the weather was truly at its worst, conditions were bordering on dangerous.
Together we agreed that these conditions were not conducive to dropping me in super-cold water and getting me back down to base camp without me truly freezing. We took a risk assessment, and reasoned that the smart thing to do was to stop searching for the lake, which was proving impossible to get to safely in the mist, and head back down.
Dammit, the first failure since the day’s swimming I missed when I got ill at the start. I had only lost 70 metres of swimming this morning, but, I hadn’t managed to complete one of my objectives. This afternoon’s lake had its challenges too.
Llyn Eigiau was on my list from the start too, it also sits high on the edge of the Carneddau range, and it has a tremendously heart-breaking story, a story I wanted to tell in the programme.
Llyn Eigiau is actually a reservoir, completed in 1910 to supply hydro-electric power for an aluminium plant. In 1925 something truly awful happened there, the 1km long 8m high dam wall was breached by the sheer pressure of water on it after days of torrential rain. The wall should never have failed under the pressure of water alone of course, the reasons why it did are a tale of stops and starts to the construction of the wall as the firm who originally set about building it went bust. After some back-room back-handers construction was restarted and at the point where this happened thanks to some poor design, and shocking management decisions, by a corrupt authority the join is where the wall failed.
The resulting breach in the dam wall sent a torrent of some 1.4 million cubic metres of water downhill and it flooded Dolgarrog, killing 12 people, 6 of them children. Boulders as big as a car were carried by the flood, it largely destroyed the village.
Growing up in north Wales I’d heard tales of this disaster, but visiting the site gave me an almost personal sense of loss and sadness that this had happened, driven by greed and corruption over good progressive engineering.
The breach in the wall has never been repaired and so what was a reservoir has now long returned to being a natural lake.
Swimming isn’t allowed in the lake as it is still used to drive a hydro-electric power plant that supplies north Wales, but again our magnificent production team had got special permission for me to swim here. It felt special, solemn. I was privileged to be able to do this and quite tearful as my emotions were heightened by the adrenaline of the swim.
The sensation of swimming Eigiau was unique, it is placed in a wide ancient valley protected by the magnificence of the Carneddau. It is quiet, spookily so. Again the safety boats for this small shallow lake were canoes, no motors, just gentle paddles. I swam in silence, utter silence, a level of quiet I don’t think I have ever experienced in my life. An utter privilege and a high point in my journey.
When was planning my swim, it never started out as a TV series, it was just something I wanted to do as a personal challenge, but as I researched all the lakes that I wanted to swim each one had a story to tell, and it was these stories that made me realise that there might be a telly series in this. I am proud to have told those stories, never more proud than being able to share the tragic tale of Llyn Eigiau.
Today I had added another 1.7km bringing my total to 57.1km.
I was close to my target, just as well because tomorrow I would be swimming the final leg of my journey that would take me home.
04/09/2021 CONWY
This was it, the final day of the challenge, I’d swum for 14 days over a 21 day run, it had been intense, and it was about to end.
As I was now very much on home territory, rather than staying in hotels I was staying with my great friends Carol & Steve Summers in Conwy. My buddy Vince Borg had driven up from the midlands to be with me for the end. Despite being a telly presenter, Violet is actually rather shy, and between us we’d agreed that because she didn’t want to appear on the programme her presence at the end of the swim would demand that she was interviewed about her response to my journey, so I completely understood why she didn’t want to be there.
The night before my final swim we were gathering at Carol & Steve’s, Vince asked me to help him bring his bags in from his van, he rolled back the van sliding door to reveal a rather special surprise. Violet. Vince and Violet and Carol & Steve had all conspired to smuggle Violet up to north Wales to be there at the end. I was floored, and thrilled.
The plan for my final swim was simple. Jump in the safety boat at Conwy harbour and sail up the River Conwy to Tal Y Cafn, where I would wait for the tide to turn and swim with the tide back down the river towards the finish under the magnificent backdrop of Conwy Castle.
By the way, people often talk of “the castles of Wales”, not ”Welsh castles”, because the largest of them are all English castles built in Wales when Edward 1st assimilated the country with what he called "A Ring Of Steel” in the 13th Century. Conwy castle is one of those, and its presence tells the turbulent story of my country.
I was nervous and rather emotional. Most of my swims had happened in relative privacy, just the crew there to witness my efforts, but today felt markedly different. If all went well I would finish my swim in a very public place, thronging with tourists, none who would have any idea why this chap was swimming in Conwy harbour, nor where I had started my journey, my friends & family would be there but I knew that this would be a very public end to my grand voyage.
Of course spending so much time back in the Land Of My Fathers….and Mothers meant that my parents, both long gone, were never far from my thoughts. My mother sat at the side of Holywell Swimming Baths when I was in primary school as I went through the task of achieving my Bronze, Silver & Gold Personal Survival Medals.
You may have done something similar yourself as a child, you know, swim 30 lengths, tread water for 2 minutes, collect a rubber brick from the deepest part of the pool, make a float out of a pair of pyjamas. My mother was there for every single stroke. Before that it was my father who had taken me to my first swimming lessons. They both played a part in me being a pretty strong swimmer as a child. But I had never competed in swimming events, never been a sportsman or a swim athlete, until now.
It was when my children were 4 and 5 years old that I got back into swimming. I’d take them to our local pool where we live in Stoke Newington and whilst they had their lessons in the kids’ pool, I would swim repeated lengths of the adult pool. When my boys had learned to swim I carried on with my swimming routine until I was doing something in the region of 70 lengths twice weekly.
It was during this time I started to imagine swimming in Welsh lakes, thinking, “Heck I can swim a reasonable distance these days”. I was inspired by a Burt Lancaster film made in 1968 called “The Swimmer” where Burt’s character is at a pool party in Connecticut and notices that every garden as far as he can see has a swimming pool in it , and so realises ”I could swim home”, and so he does. It’s a great film, a voyage of discovery. I began to wonder if I could do something similar on a grand scale, and that this might be a great way of marking my 60th birthday, what if I were to attempt to swim across Wales, could I do it? Could it be done at all?
I knew that the largest natural body of (still) water in Wales was 6.5km long, so if I trained myself to be able to swim that sort of distance, then in theory I could actually swim across any body of water in Wales.
To see how I got on in open water, which is a very different experience to swimming in a pool; my pal Steve Summers (something of a triathlete) convinced me to join him and his daughter Sian (herself a competition swimmer) to see if I could swim the length of Llyn Geirionydd near Llanrwst next time I was visiting north Wales. Whilst I was nowhere near as swift in the water as Steve & Sian, I was successful and started to plot the reality of my journey.
As I explained before this was only a personal challenge at this point, it wasn’t until I discovered that every body of water I wanted to swim had a tremendous back-story that It revealed itself as a possible TV series….about Wales. I also discovered that most of the vast challenging reservoirs I wanted to swim simply didn’t allow swimming, for good reason. The only way I could get permission to do this is if I had a safety boat and team with me, and that was going to be rather expensive for the 3 weeks I estimated that the journey would take…unless I did make a TV series out of it, then that cost could be covered by the production budget.
I created a short taster video of what I planned and sent it to Llinos Wynne commissioner for factual programmes at S4C (Channel 4 Wales). I sent it last thing on a Friday and on Monday morning I opened and email in response from her saying just two words: “Let’s talk.”
Llinos loved the idea and created a hit-list of 4 production companies that had the skills to work in partnership with WhizzBang TV the company that Violet & run. It was an easy choice Cwmni Da (“Good Company”) were ideally skilled to make this a possibility. My initial conversations with Huw Erddyn who would go on to direct and produce the show revealed someone who I instantly had a rapport with. I’d seen some of Huw’s work and I was deeply impressed.
I had already upped my swimming regime and started swimming regularly at the West Reservoir, in Stoke Newington, a safe, well-managed public swimming location in a shallow reservoir near where I lived and I was now regularly swimming 3, 4, 5 and eventually 6 km in open water.
And now here I was about to swim the final leg of my extraordinary journey.
I remember talking about my father just before I plunged into the River Conwy. He died when he was 59 years old, so now I was older than the age he had ever managed to reach, and I hope he would have approved, or even been astonished at what I had set out to do.
Off I went, swimming with the flow of the river as it reached towards the sea. People were waving to me from the banks, I thought that they were simply random people being friendly, but some were friends of friends who’d heard about what I was doing and were there to wish me luck and cheer me on, amazing.
I was making solid progress with the current. The River Conwy is pretty clean, but the team worked hard to steer me around the odd patch of human unpleasantness floating on the surface.
Incidentally I now know that there were 3,500 sewage pollution events recorded in the 2021 bathing season alone in England & Wales.
I swam and swam and swam and swam, admittedly helped by the current working with me, but I was covering a huge distance and as the river got wider and wider the vast scale of what I was doing was laid out in front of me.
I was definitely going to do this, but I was tired, of course I was. I'd been swimming for weeks now. Being weary I was taking regular pauses in the water, to have a wee, take on fluids or just catch my breath. By now I had been swimming for over 2 hours and the water level was beginning to drop, revealing vast sandbanks that I had to navigate. The water was getting shallow.
The crew realised that I was running out of time. At this point my coach the redoubtable Caris Bowen said something to me that I will never forget:
“Gareth, tro nesa ti’n teimlo fel stopio, jyst dweud NA, a cariwch ymlaen”.
And for those that don’t speak Welsh she had said “Gareth, next time you feel like stopping just say NO and carry on”.
Caris isn’t someone you argue with, she knows more about endurance than I know about Slade, so I heeded her advice, and BOOM! I came around a corner and there was the castle, the end was in sight.
However there was a problem.
I had always hoped to be able to swim under the magnificent combination of bridges that straddle the River Conwy, but I had been advised against it on safety grounds, the river at this point is forced through a narrow gap and not only flows at a ferocious rate here, but also creates violent swirling eddies & whirlpools in that gap which; at best, would be almost impossible for even the strongest swimmer to swim through, or at worst, drown me.
So, as we had agreed with the Conwy Harbourmaster, as we approached the bridge the team hauled me into the safety boat, we sailed under the magnificent Telford suspension rail bridge and the road bridge and as soon as we were safely through I dropped back over the side into the water for the last part of my swim.
BUGGER, I had dropped into a current of water here that was flowing in the opposite direction to where I wanted to go. Drawing on every last jot of energy I had, I launched into crawl and steered myself at 90 degrees to the current until I found another part of the harbour’s waters that weren't doing everything they could to stop me from finishing.
The crew had spotted that a tourist pleasure boat was arriving at the jetty at this very moment and shouted to me to let me know. The plan had been for me to swim to the jetty, but I couldn’t do this now, so I headed for the muddy banks in front of it instead…..and finally reached land.
I could hear cheering on the harbour wall. Got out of the water onto the mudflats. I took my swim fins off and instinctively threw them high into the air in celebration. I climbed the harbour stairs to be hugged by my pal Vinnie, Carol and Steve & the crowd of my great pals who were all there to welcome me home.
I had done it.
This last section along the River Conwy had seen me swim 8.4km, bringing my total to 63.8km. I was home, I’d just sum the entire length of Wales from Porthcawl.
I hugged my pal Mike Peters from the Alarm, I hugged my pal Steve Allan Jones, Carol’s family and I hugged Violet (off camera).
I was home. Just like Burt Lancaster I had swum all the way home.
Being a bit of an old softy I was expecting to arrive in Conwy with goggles full of tears, but no, the overwhelming feeling I had was of just sheer joy, satisfaction that this task had been completed, unbelievable.
No one was more surprised than me that this whole project had actually happened and that I had been successful in completing it.
But this wasn’t something I had done on my own. There are many people I must thank for making this whole thing happen with their support.
Thanks to my great friends Alex & Anna here in Stoke Newington who endured 3 years of me saying: “I’ve had an idea and I think I’m going to do it”. Seren, Huw & Caris, for coaching and coaxing me across some gigantic bodies of water.
Another Seren, another Alex, these two from Bangor University along with Sophie gave me great advice on fitness, nutrition and conditioning. Emma Tanya Lewis for reinforcing the sheer joy of open water swimming in Welsh lakes and refining my stroke. And the staff at Hackney’s swimming pools and open water swimming facilities who provided a safe and friendly place for me to train.
Robin Hayles at Hyundai GB who loaned me not one, but two truly fantastic cars that got me (and all my swimming paraphernalia) from lake to lake in comfort, style and economy.
Every time I see a Hyundai Tuscon on the road I am magically transported back to last summer. I may have to buy one.
Huge respect to Huw Erddyn, Llyr, Llion, Gethin, Ben, for pictures and production, Cheryl, Alan, Owain & James for the excellent sound.
Everyone at Cwmni Da who not only filmed & edited the whole thing into the most “real” pieces of television I have ever been lucky enough to make, they also put together a complex schedule that would make the whole thing possible, despite resistance from Dwr Cymru to allow me to swim in their admittedly dangerous reservoirs. My eternal gratitude goes to Dilwyn & Dave who kept me alive despite the obvious risks.
My niece Paula, plus Vince Borg, Steve Allan Jones & Mike Peters, three of my closest pals who were there to greet me and celebrate with me at the end, and their lovely families who made my arrival in Conwy feel like an event.
A very special thank you has to go to Carol & Steve Summers, who practically dragged me out of pool swimming to give me a taste of open water swimming, encouraged and enabled me in my adventure and then fed & entertained during the north Wales section and then partied with me at the end.
I am deeply grateful Llinos Wynne, the commissioner at S4C, who, when I described to her what I planned to do, commissioned a series about the challenge without a moment’s hesitation. Quite the risk. Diolch Llinos, diolch o galon.
But most of all I must thank my 2 sons Tycho & Indigo for putting up with years of me sneezing violently all over the house (as a result of something called “swimmer’s nose”).
Finally, hugs and love to my partner for the last 23 years Violet Berlin, for not only encouraging me to do this ridiculous thing, but also systematically putting in place all the elements that made it a reality.
For the last 12 months I have been working on my next challenge, which will be very different from Nofio Adre. More on that at another time, no spoilers.
Final thanks to Iain Carstairs, Carol Summers and the Nofio Adre crew who took the vast majority of the pictures I have shared here to illustrate my story.
©Gareth Jones 2022