After recently rediscovering a love of swimming and especially outdoor swimming, we spent last summer trying to improve our basic swimming techniques and sessions at the Lido featured very big in this, along with our local lake when we were in France. Once the autumn came and we ended up back indoors, we knew we couldn’t wait until the new season to swim outdoors again and although the River Wey was tempting, we fancied some winter sunshine, and so it was we booked our first ever swimming holiday and joined the Swim Trek company’s Red Sea Safari in February.
The trip was based in the small, slightly hippy-flavoured Egyptian resort of Dahab. For 6 days we were swimming in the most fabulous waters we had ever been in. Although Michel was brought up with the Mediterranean sea as his playground – (Janetta largely had to make do with the lovely Lido, typically being dropped off by dad in the morning with sisters, to be collected at the end of the day, but that’s another story) – neither of us had ever seen so much marine life and swum in such richly alive waters, every minute in the water was breath-taking. We were the slowest swimmers in the group (of about 14) but this didn’t matter in the least, there was no pressure to swim at any rate other than what we felt comfortable with and by the end of the week, our “slow” group had acquired 3 from the faster groups who realised the wisdom of swimming in such beautiful waters slowly, it allowed us time to savour the life below the waters on the reef.
Swim Trek specialise in swimming tours around the world, including locally in the UK, and having stumbled across them, we cannot speak highly enough of them as a company. They have a winning formula: find great swimming locations, group people together who can swim at their own comfortable paces, make it sociable and fun as well as instructive and most of all, make sure everyone feels safe, relaxed, enjoys themselves and their swimming. We both gained so much from the experience, not least by improving our swimming, we also made some new great friends and all round had one of the best holidays we’ve had. We’re going back for more, heading off to the Norfolk Broads and the English Lakes with Swim Trek later in the summer and we’ll definitely be going back to the Red Sea again.
One funny thing we found before we went (and even afterwards) was that when we told people we were going on a swimming holiday to Egypt, almost without fail people would follow it up with the questions “what a diving holiday” – it would seem that whereas walking, golfing, diving, skiing, etc, etc holidays are completely accepted in the popular psyche, mention a swimming holiday and most people don’t quite get it!
(We’ve no financial interest at all in the company, we’re just totally enthusiastic to share good news about a small British company that offers swimmers some great experiences). We’re sure that the Lido must play host to other swimmers who’ve had Swim Trek experiences, it might be nice to share some here just in case anyone is thinking of taking the plunge and having a swimming holiday?
Janetta & Michel Bensouilah
