Matt Flux, 42 and founder of Formotion Clinics, is quite mad! For the last few years he has organised an annual long distance sea swim challenge with his friends to raise money or awareness for a charity. Its always called “The Big Swim”. They have swum from Weymouth to Lulworth, all the way round Portland and other equally crazy adventures.
After meeting and getting to know Kate and Frank Hopps he decided this year to dedicate this year’s swim to Kennedys Disease UK. The aim was to spread as much information and awareness as possible rather than a dedicated fund raising effort.
So with only one other friend, who should know better, they set off on Friday which was a very windy and wavy day and swam 3 miles from Overcombe to Osmington and the next day, another pretty stormy day, from Portland to Overcombe where a few more friends joined them!
This year however Matt decided to have the added adventure of inviting the children to take part in their own sea swim under the KD UK banner, christened “Big Swim’s Little Swim”.
So with the wind and waves crashing into the beach all morning we found it hard to believe they would be able to get in the water let alone swim!
But miracles do happen and, at 2pm, when we were due to start, the sun shone and the sea flattened out into a perfect day for swimming. There were about 45 children taking part and they could all choose their own personal goal as a distance. So some of the older ones swam all the way from Overcombe to Greenhill which is just over a mile and in the sea is a pretty long way, others joined in half way or nearer the finish which was based at Jo and Alex Sloley’s beach hut, generously donated for the occasion!. The children were rewarded with hotdogs from top chefs Craig Woollam and Dave Cheeseman. All the children were awarded medals and t-shirts of which they were very proud!
As you can see from the photo there was a great representation from Sunninghill with at least half of the children coming from our school.
It was a wonderful experience for everyone and the children especially loved the challenge and would have given some of the Iron Men and Iron Ladies, who were racing the next day, a good run for their money!