TWO charities will benefit from a fundraising adventure which involves an intrepid four-strong team from Northumberland taking on a marathon swimming challenge on Britain’s biggest lake.
Three firefighters and a council emergency planning officer are in training for the gruelling event, which will see them swim a total of 24 miles across Loch Ness in the highlands of Scotland next month.
The team comprises Andy Davison, watch manager with the Northumberland fire and rescue service based at West Hartford, his fire service colleagues, station manager Andy Railton and firefighter Susanne Wright, and David Wheatley, from the county council’s emergency planning unit.
The open water swim, planned for September 20, is expected to take between 12 and 14 hours to complete, with the team members swimming in relays across the widest part of the loch. They will each swim for an hour at a time, wearing special wet suits in the chilly water temperature.
Two support boats will accompany them across the loch, one of which will ferry the swimmer who has just completed his or her session back to shore to warm up before returning to the water for their next leg.
The foursome are raising money for the national Firefighters’ Charity and Wansbeck Hospital’s special care baby unit. David Wheatley, who regularly competes in triathlons, and Andy Davison, who swam the English Channel in 1997 and round Jersey as part of a relay team in 1999, are experienced open water swimmers. But Susanne Wright and Andy Railton are taking on this kind of challenge for the first time.
