All that water to play in...
I first got hooked on open water swimming 5 years ago in 2003 when I went on what was to be the first ever Swimtrek holiday. Swimtrek are a company specialising in open water swim holidays, and a couple of weeks ago, for the first time in a couple of years, I went off Swimtrekking. To Swimtrek's new destination in Sardinia.
I was very excited, arriving a day early to relax a bit before the start of the trip, which was 'island hopping' (without recourse to ferries) around the Maddalena Archipelago, on the northern tip of Sardinia. Nestling in the Straits of Bonifacio which separates Italian Sardinia and French Corsica, the Maddalena National Park is a collection of seven or so main islands and many other smaller islets and rocky outcrops.
The towns and buildings on the archipelago are not that special themselves, but the landscape and the sea are beautiful. The islands form the high points of a valley that once joined Corsica and Sardinia, and the strong north westerly winds have carved and moulded the pink granite into alarming and bold shapes to create a ghostly and rugged landscape. Apparently Sardinia is where many of the Spaghetti westerns were filmed. Once we were in the water, away from the towns and populations, the view was spectacular. Jumping into the crystal clear water revealed as much of a rocky landscape under the water as there was above it, allowing us the chance to swim down tunnels and over rocky precipices; hugging the coastline in some of the swims for spectacular aquatic scenery.
Eleven swimmers, two Swimtrek guides, and a boat pilot were we, setting off to swim from island to island, round the coast and in and out of sandy bays of and rocky coastlines. Amongst us were two Canadians, an Israeli living in Germany, and Irish woman, a French woman living in London, and the rest more or less British. Waterbabes one and all.
I'm not sure why but this part of Europe has fish in it - unlike the Adriatic sea which has been fished until it now seems virtually empty - this part of the Mediterranean seems rich with life. We saw so many types of fish, at some points surrounded by shoals and shoals of seductive little fish that the Italian call 'chestnuts' (but in Italian, obviously). They just seem to suspend themselves in the water, little dark, black fish, evenly spaced, just hanging out, watching us swim by. They don't swim, they just seemed to hang out, floating around, watching us swim past.
We had two or three good swims a day, totalling around 2.5 or sometimes 3 hours a day.
The beautiful rocky coastline of the islands, above
On the first day we swam a beautiful route down the east coast of Maddalena.
The second day we crossed from Maddalena to Spargi (2.5km or so) and then after lunch from Spargi to Budelli (3km).
The third day we swam from the North Western coast of Maddalena to Isola Barrettini, an uninhabited rock hardly meriting being called an island. From there we hopped on the boat to Santa Maria to do another coastal swim which culminated with us aiming for a little space between Budelli, Razolli and Santa Maria, that our Italian guide, Francesco, likes to call 'the swimming pool'. Before we reached that though, we had to swim upstream against a strong current in what we fondly dubbed Jellyfish Alley (the current being formed by all of the water and tide from the three islands being squeezed out through a narrow passageway between two sets of rocks.)
The fourth day had my favourite day's swimming - a walk and scramble down from the top of a rocky hillside on Caprere which led us to a secluded beach with white sand where we started our longest swim of the week. A coastal swim, but for some of it against a strong headwind, we were swimming in and out of coves and bays and between rocks for 2.5 hours until we landed for lunch in a huge bay with a white beach and the clearest of water, weaving between moored pleasure boats to reach our destination (and lunch).
The last day of the trip was pretty windy - and we went with our pilot back to Budelli, Razolli and Santa Maria. We zig-zagged from one to another - the crossings sometimes only taking ten minutes or so: swim from one to the other, walk over the deserted island, scramble down some rocks, drop in to the sea, swim along the coast, ending up up back... where we started... more or less. One last swim against the current in Jellyfish Ally made us all laugh, especially as we could then swim back down with the current back to the boat at great speed.
A fabulous holiday, great swimming, great company. And those little chestnut fish.
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