Page 34 - nov-2022

November 2022 November 2022

ONE FOOT IN THE WAVE 2 Please Don’t
CHANNEL SWIM Overtidy Your
Garden, Save Your

After almost two years of planning, we finally arrived in Energy and Help
Dover for our great channel relay swim challenge. Our Wildlife
aim was to be the oldest standard 6 person relay team Some gardeners view the
to swim the English Channel. autumn as a time to tidy
The average age of our six up the garden when the
swimmers on the date of our last flowers have finished
swi m, M on day 12 t h .
blooming. From now
onwards many of us are
to be seen busy cutting
and chipping things, even burning material. Save yourself the bother and help
wildlife at the same time. Leaf litter would be much better turned into leaf mould
or used as mulch on flower beds. By removing spent flowers, seed heads and
dead plant stalks you may well be denying birds a good food source and
removing opportunities for butterflies, moths, ladybirds, many other insects or their
eggs to overwinter in our gardens.
Take the example of butterflies, some spend the winter as eggs stuck to the bark
of trees, shrubs and other plant stalks and only hatch out the following spring.
September was 75 Others might overwinter as caterpillars that stop feeding as the temperatures get
years and 187 days. lower, only resuming their feeding when winter is over. Some spend the winter
Our oldest swimmer wrapped in the safety of a chrysalis, waiting until spring or summer to emerge as a
Robert Lloyd-Evans beautiful butterfly. Some butterflies even overwinter in their adult form tucked
from Poole will be 80 away in the shelter of leaf litter, woodpiles, hedges etc. We all love to see
n e x t m o n t h i n butterflies in our gardens and countryside, so give them (and other insects) a
October, Bob Holman helping hand by doing less!
from Affpuddle is 77, Linda Ashmore from Weymouth
75, Bob Roberts from Weymouth 74, Kevin Murphy
from Dover 73 and Parviz Habibi from Surbiton 70. Souls Moor Ponies
These were all very experienced open water swimmers but youth was not on our We are fortunate that Souls Moor is a ‘Site of Nature Conservation Interest’, a
side. Parviz and I had swum the channel solo just once, Linda had done it twice designation given to the area because of the diversity of wet meadow plants
and holds the current record for the oldest lady to swim the channel. Kevin that occur there, some of which have been lost from many areas because of
Murphy, a living legend, has swum the channel a staggering 34 times, the most by intensive agriculture. This is why we have the 2 charming ponies there and they
a male swimmer and is the current King of the Channel. Bob R and Robert were have been doing great work over the Summer, grazing the land and keeping the
previous channel relay swimmers. grass sward low. It will soon be time for the ponies to leave for their winter
quarters, so do go and say ‘bye’ to them! Over the past six years during which the
We were at Dover Marina at 11pm on Sunday evening and we made our ponies have been present, there has a marked and welcome reduction in the
introductions as some of us in the team were meeting for the first time. Simon Ellis vigour of the taller plants such as marsh thistle, meadowsweet and hogweed. This
and his crew Maz Critchley were sailing our boat High Hopes and a lot was to helps to create a better balance of vegetation and allow the smaller and rarer
depend upon their skill and expertise as our swim progressed. Lisa Jupp was the plants and flowers to flourish.
official observer on the boat for the Channel Swimming & Piloting Federation

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