Lorraine Candy’s Scilly Swim Challenge

‘Postcards From Midlife’ co-host Lorraine Candy joined her tribe of middle-aged women to take on the epic 15km Scilly Swim Challenge – and a voyage of self-discovery

Nervously standing on the edge of the white sandy bay at Porthcressa Beach on St Mary’s I had one phrase rolling around in my mind: ‘eat the elephant’. That’s what I was here to do on this 15km sea swim over two days. I just had to take one small bite at a time from the giant elephant of a swim in front of me. Or ‘go stroke by stroke’ as I told myself when the 150-strong crowd headed gingerly into the Caribbean-blue waters of the Scilly Isles for swim number one of six.

The September air temperature felt warm in my wetsuit but the crystal-clear water was 15 degrees Celsius and a north westerly wind was whipping up an impressive chop and swell. The sun was trying to poke through and cheer us on but I’m convinced I heard the seagulls overhead laughing, they knew that something unexpected was lurking in the sea to greet us later.

My journey to the 20-year-old Scilly Swim Challenge has been as much of an adventure as the swim itself. Standing alongside everyone on the beaches of Scilly was affirmation for me I wasn’t alone in this need to step out of my daily comfort zone, I was with my tribe: a group of mostly middle-aged women on a tricky voyage of self-discovery at a time in life packed with momentous transitions and unexpected events, not least the rollercoaster of menopause and perimenopause. Here we were, using our swims to find braver parts of us to cope with the new midlife challenges: empty nest, caring for elderly parents, grieving lost friends, cancer, divorce, redundancies and wrestling with new identities as our minds and bodies change.

Outdoor swimming had saved me when I unravelled physically and mentally during my perimenopause, which is when your hormones fluctuate 10 years or so ahead of menopause (a year after your last period).

A champion sleeper, I had suddenly became insomniac at 47, suffering night terrors. I was losing my mind, and feared I had a brain tumour the day I couldn’t remember which side of the road to drive on. After seeking specialist help, I found out it was a lack of oestrogen, progesterone and testosterone that were causing my symptoms and within a week of going on Hormone Replacement Therapy I was back in the room. I knew so little of what I was going through I wrote a book about it to help other women get the right support: What’s Wrong With Me: from unravelling to reinvention a midlife memoir.

Through it all my newfound love of the cold water held me together. I learnt front crawl in my late 40s so I could take part in events and completed a few mini-triathlons as well as the Bantham Swoosh, the Henley mile and a 30 hour 6-person relay across Lake Geneva which is governed by Channel swim rules, I was proud to qualify. More importantly, beside the lakes, lidos and seas I had found a group of same-age women quietly completing extraordinary swimming quests, all of us recognising that this sport was kind to our bodies as they aged.

In fact, a 2022 survey by UCL found that the average age of female cold-water swimmers was 49, with 66 per cent preferring the sea. The Scilly Swim Challenge started in 2014 and is now run by SwimQuest holidays, who tell me the majority of those booking holidays now are middle-aged women and they were in the majority taking on the challenge, which I think even experienced Ironmen competitors would find hard.

Yet most of us midlife swimmers would never fit that traditional description of the word athlete. A glance across the bay at St Mary’s would tell you female outdoor swimmers proudly come in all shapes and sizes. I’m a busy London-based 56-year-old mum of four kids aged 13 to 22, I’m never in the fast lane at the pool and I rarely do the kind of cardio exercise you’d associate with athletic goals. But one thing we all know as midlife women is that we can do hard things, so we are particularly suited to endurance endeavours. We’ll match any record-breaking athlete when it comes to mindset as I found out 5km into day one’s second swim.

We’d already battled relentless wind on the first 2.5km swim and SwimQuest changed all six of our routes due to safety concerns. The notorious 6km came next. I’d been dreading this swim as I’ve never swum over 4km and the number six occupied a huge amount of my training fears. It was all my swim buddy, jewellery designer Claudia Bradby, 55, and I could think of us we trained together for the Scilly challenge.

I call Claudia ‘Pollyanna Positivity’ for her extreme optimism but even she went suspiciously quiet as we entered the water for that 6km. We knew the impressive kayak crew and safety boats were on hand if we wanted to get out, but neither of us was ever going to get out. Unless we were taken by a shark, we’d keep going. But 800m off St Mary’s Pellistry beach finish line everything changed. The green pod was hit by what I now know is called a ‘smack’ of jellyfish, something that has never happened before on this swim.

I watched the hero skins swimmers dealing with multiple stings and I was stung on my face, wrist, feet and ankles. Within minutes the kayaks had us on safety boats and the beach paramedics checked us all over. I was furious. Unbelievably I had been loving every minute of that dreaded long swim. It was a gloriously tough but soul nourishing experience that I will never forget. I’d looked at my watch 90 minutes in and felt teary at the joy of my accomplishment. All the negativity I had felt about my lack of technique and speed dissolved and I realised the only way for me from here was to get better and better at the thing I most enjoyed doing.

It brought home the importance of something former Olympian and sports scientist Greg Whyte OBE told me when I asked for advice the week before. How can a slow swimmer in her fifties, with limited time, ever imagine she would be good enough for this? A question I note many women ask as they often doubt their abilities and play down their skill set (an attitude rarer in some male swimmers who often do the opposite!).

Greg’s speciality is getting ordinary people through extraordinary sporting experiences, and he told me to focus on the process not the outcome. Swimming events like this are not about time, or distance, indeed SwimQuest are at pains to point out this is not a race, no times are recorded. It’s about the quality of your experience. He said that when you hit those moments where you may feel you won’t make it bring your focus back to the process, it’s one arm in front of the other and if you know you’ve done the training then that will keep you moving forward.

On day two of the swim a few people decided to drop out or not do all four swims, but the majority of the three swim pods adventured on. The weather changed the routes yet again, but we felt like a merry gang of jolly musketeers, trooping to the water’s edge with words of encouragement. The most important advice Greg gave me was ringing in my ears; it’s never about how you swim, it’s about who you swim with. I couldn’t have done this without ‘Pollyanna positivity’ aka Claudia smiling at the shore beside me or the camaraderie of my fellow midlife women in the Scilly Sea alongside me or the friends who sent supportive messages and made me ‘you’ve got this’ meditation tapes.

You are who you swim with and that’s a mantra I will take into the next challenge.

Lorraine Candy’s tips for taking part in the Scilly Swim

• Find a squad or group to swim with in the sea in all conditions. This is most vital thing to do – you must be able to swim in the rough sea for up to two hours.
• Swim skins at 15 degrees regularly even if wearing a wetsuit on the day. We swam at Dover too which I recommend.
• I swam three times a week from April to August. One pool speed swim, one outdoor distance swim, one for-the-love- of-swimming swim. I also went on a SwimQuest technique week in Greece where I had my stroke analysed and practised in the pool later.
• I did one gym weight training session a week, ad hoc stretching for swimmers on YouTube and walked regularly.
• Practise getting in and out of outdoor swims and walking with your kit.
• Don’t over think the food element: Claudia made chia seed energy balls, I packed Mars bars, it’s what suits you so practise. The Scilly Swim sandwiches you pre-order are great. Jelly babies are a must for salty mouths.
• Don’t suffer ‘death by data’: watches are great but try a few training swims without them to get the feel of your speed
• Your subconscious is a powerful thing so stop the negative self-talk. I put notes saying ‘you are a finisher’ around the house.
• Stay in touch with the ‘why’ eg why or who you are doing this for. Keep coming back to that when you wobble.
• Pick the right pod: I chose the slowest pod as I am 2.5k an hour.
• Try a mass start beforehand: this was my least favourite bit so get used to swimming in a pod if you don’t normally.
• Remember the tide is with you so some moments feel super speedy!
• Expect the unexpected: you probably won’t get jellyfish, but you will get last minute route changes.

Getting there – Book your place via SwimQuest: we did the 2-day swim but there are other Scilly events. 2025 events go on sale on 7 Nov 2024). Fly to the Scilly Isles with Sky Bus or get the Scillonian passenger ferry from Penzance.

We stayed at The Star Castle Hotel on St Marys.

Follow Lorraine Candy on Insta @lorrainecandy or listen to her talk through the swim on the podcast she co-hosts, Postcards From Midlife