Going against the Flow in France

Le Flow des Gabarriers, an incredible 33km journey down the River Charente in Southwestern France, is a highlight of Ben Lane’s year so far, even though he didn’t finish the swim

If I had swum just a tiny bit faster, I would now be holding a finisher’s certificate. Instead, my result on the official event website reads “abandon”.

“Abandon.” Such a nondescript word. It fails entirely to describe what happened.

After 8 hours, 2 minutes and 56 seconds in the water, I reached the 26km cut-off point exactly 2 minutes and 56 seconds too late. A tough break, but entirely my own fault. Somewhere along the river, I had messed up. In truth, the die had been cast months earlier by my distinct lack of anything resembling a sensible training plan.

Having flopped unceremoniously out of the River Charente, I stood talking to a lovely event volunteer, caught between two opposing emotions. There were tears of disappointment at being asked to stop, but also a certain amount of relief.

After a few hugs and words of consolation from the event team, I realised that my body and mind were no longer of any use. My right arm hung helplessly by my side, locked in place after hours of continuous rotation. My brain was a train wreck.

I had reached the point of no return. Yet, almost immediately, I found myself thinking about next year and the prospect of coming back to do it all over again. Open water swimming slips quietly into your thoughts and does strange things.

The finish line in Cognac – and my certificate – lay about 7km downstream. I, meanwhile, was standing in the middle of a field waiting for a lift, happy and thoroughly miserable in equal measure.

This was the magnificent Le Flow des Gabarriers: an incredible 33km journey down the Charente and a river swim quite unlike any other. Although it became one of the highlights of my year, my experience was also a story of terrible timekeeping and general mismanagement.

To understand how I ended up stranded in that field, we need to step back in time.

A big swim, one in which you expect to spend most of the day in the water, requires months of planning. It needs proper thought about training, nutrition, equipment, travel and all the other details that can make the difference between success and failure.

I did none of this because other things got in the way. I should have withdrawn and postponed the swim until the following year. Instead, I stubbornly and stupidly ploughed on. If this trip had an enemy, it was time, or, more accurately, our management of it.

Our plan was to use the Bailey of Bristol Endurance campervan as our tour and equipment bus, stopping to camp as we travelled south towards Bordeaux. The campervan performed brilliantly. It was comfortable, practical and a delightfully easy way to travel. We were the weak link.

Our first day ended with us arriving late at a beautiful campsite in the Loire Valley, halfway to Bordeaux, where a slightly weary owner kindly welcomed us long after the gates closed. The following day, thanks to another piece of poor time management, we nearly ran out of fuel on the toll road and limped into a service station with little more than fumes in the tank.

Despite our best efforts to sabotage the itinerary, the campervan kept us comfortable and moving in the right direction. We somehow reached Cognac for the pre-event briefing in a cinema on the edge of Cognac – we were only a few minutes late!

First staged in 2022, Le Flow des Gabarriers was created by local open-water enthusiast Grégory Lécrevisse and a small team of Charente swimmers. Their aim was to establish a point-to-point river marathon while encouraging swimmers of all abilities to discover the pleasures of open water.

Its name honours the gabarriers, the boatmen who once carried salt, wine, and barrels of cognac along the Charente in traditional flat-bottomed barges. The original 33km journey from Châteauneuf-sur-Charente to Cognac remains the headline challenge, but shorter distances have since been introduced. Across its first four editions, more than 450 swimmers tackled one of its courses.

We experienced the event’s growing popularity first-hand as we joined a long snake of swimmers walking through Cognac towards the railway station for the journey upstream to the start. Even at that early hour, the atmosphere had something of a festival feel, although the excitement was mixed with an unmistakable air of trepidation.

After some last-minute preparations and a few words of encouragement from my son, who would accompany me by kayak, we were off. We entered the cool, clear water of the Charente amid the splashing and jostling of the other swimmers, trying not to think about the monumental task ahead or my sudden realisation that I might not have done quite enough in the build-up.

I quietened my mind, settled into my stroke, and began searching for a rhythm. But without enough preparation behind me, pacing was little more than guesswork.

After a few hours, my son and I were working quite well in tandem. From the kayak, he provided food, drinks, and regular words of encouragement. I tried to keep his spirits up too, conscious that watching someone swim for hours might not be the most exciting way to spend a day.

I knew I was moving slowly, but there were still swimmers around me and, I suspected, a few behind. It felt as though we were on track to reach the cut-off – but we were not convinced.

The current was unusually weak that year – reportedly the lowest in the event’s history – and the thought kept returning to me. The cut-off times remained unchanged, despite the river offering less assistance than usual. The conditions were the same for everyone, and my preparation remained the real problem, but it became another small doubt for my mind to work on.

Around four hours into the swim, my thoughts took a downward turn. I began, slowly and imperceptibly, to give up. Physically, I was tired but still capable of continuing. The greater struggle was taking place inside my head, and once you descend into that kind of mental abyss, it can be hard to pull yourself back out.

I found myself repeating an increasingly soulful refrain: my son is bored, I am not fit, the flow is low, I am not going to make it. I could not shake those thoughts, and eventually they began to affect my stroke. Each rotation burned through my shoulders and sent an electric shock through my body. After seven hours, I was barely hanging on, in real pain. Yet we both realised that I might still make the cut-off. I just had to push on and remain focused on the task.

For the next hour, I somehow cleared some of the negativity from my mind and body. I increased my pace and replaced my mournful song with something more upbeat: jazz, crashing drum solos and a saxophone wailing ecstatically somewhere in the background.

It felt better. I felt better. But, as you already know, we missed the cut-off by less than three minutes.

That was where my swim ended; where I met the volunteer who hugged me, the volunteer who also shed a tear with me, as I climbed from the river; and why I found myself standing in a French field, torn and battered. Yet I was already completely convinced that I would be back, armed with a new mindset and, hopefully, a proper training plan.

The lesson seems obvious now: give yourself time to prepare, build extra time into every stage of an event and allow yourself time to think, settle into the experience and enjoy it.

I managed very few, if any, of those things. From the drive through France to the final push for the cut-off, we were always racing the clock and in the end the clock won.

In hindsight, however, I am glad I did not cancel. Had I trained properly, I might have completed the 33km, felt satisfied and quietly consigned the experience to memory.

Failing has instead given me the fire to keep going: to find the next challenge, return to Cognac and reset the clock.

Failure, I have decided, is brilliant.

It is time now, to go with the Flow.

The 6th edition of the Le Flow des Gabarriers open-water river swim will take place on 12 June, 2027 on the Charente River in France. This multi-distance event features solo and relay options ranging from a 1 km fun swim up to the signature 33 km marathon.

A little help along the way

My planning may have been questionable, but our accommodation, clothing and transport were considerably more reliable.

The Hôtel ibis Cognac Centre, at 24 Rue Elisée-Mousnier, gave us a comfortable and friendly base in the heart of Cognac. Its central location, close to the railway station and within walking distance of the town centre, made the complicated business of getting swimmer, kayaker, and kit to the right places much easier.

My DryBones changing robe was equally welcome, particularly after eight hours in the river, when staying warm and preserving what remained of my dignity became the immediate priorities.

The Orca Zeal Perform wetsuit was another piece of equipment that performed better than its owner. Designed around flexibility and neutral buoyancy, it felt supple and natural in the water without artificially altering my swimming position. That freedom of movement matters over an eight-hour swim. My shoulders eventually complained, but that was down to my lack of training rather than the wetsuit.

Finally, a huge thank you to Bailey of Bristol for lending us the Endurance campervan. It proved comfortable, capable, and remarkably forgiving of our chaotic timekeeping. We tried our best to undermine the journey; our camper van kept rescuing it.