Don't Tell Me I Can't…Swim The Channel

Aged 51, Wendy Figures shows it’s never too late to take on a challenge.

- Natasha Holt & Anna Verdon

My muscles ached but I continued battling against the sea’s current as night turned to day. Then, with one last stroke, I made it to the shore. I’d just completed a 22-mile open-water swim...

I’d always loved swimming and had competed in galas as a child but, by 26, I stopped to concentrate on raising my daughter Katie, then four. Georgie was born in 1998, and Ella a year later, but my passion never left me, and I loved teaching my girls to swim. In January 2002, when Ella was three, I decided to set up my own swim school at the local council pool near my home in Sheffield

But then in June 2012, a friend mentioned he’d been open-water swimming in a beautiful lake 40 minutes’ drive from Sheffield. At that stage, I’d only ever swum in a pool or the sea on holiday with my partner Paul. But it was the way my friend talked about swimming in the open air that fired something inside me, too. I was 46, and couldn’t imagine plunging into wild waters, but what was the harm in giving it a go?