Kildare woman to swim English Channel to raise funds for sister and other nursing home residents

After taking up swimming on a regular basis a little over a year ago, Celbridge woman Mercedes Bagnall is preparing to undertake the huge challenge of swimming across the English Channel to raise money for her sister and six others who live together in full-time care.

Mercedes will be part of a team of four that takes on the challenge of swimming from Dover to the French coastline, a journey that will be at least 21 miles in distance, though that may change due to the strength of the tide.

So how did it come about that Mercedes, her brother Ken, and friends Martina Ring and Ruth Sloley would swim the English Channel?

"I took it up in April of last year and a group of parents I go camping with were going to do a relay Iron Man," 46-year-old Mercedes told KildareNow.

"So I swam in Killary Harbour last September and then in the meantime one of the girls who had attempted this before, but didn't get to finish it because of the weather, I said to her 'what do you want to do for your 50th?' She said she wanted to swim the Channel."

She will be raising the money to put towards a new wheelchair accessible car for her sister, Jen, and the six people she lives in full-time care with. Jen was moved out of St Raphael's at the St John of God centre in Celbridge last year following cutbacks and relocated to a house in Riverside, Barnhall. She is the only one of seven who is not wheelchair dependant, but Mercedes wants to provide something that all of the residents can avail of.

"Because of all the changes and cutbacks they don't really have reliable transport. We want to get them a wheelchair accessible car so the nurses could drive them and their not depending on a bus driver all the time. Maybe a doctor's appointment, or if they want to take them out to do something, they can do it more easily," she said.

"It's not just for my sister, it's for the whole of the unit."

Looking ahead to the daunting challenge it doesn't really seem to phase Mercedes. The four members of the team will each swim for an hour before taking a break on the boat accompanying them, and they will be tracked by specialists who carry out observations of people seeking to swim from England to France. They could end up in either Calais or Cap Gris Mez depending on how the tide takes them, and that could mean the variations in the length of the swim could be up to five hours according to Mercedes.

"Where you finish really depends on the tides," she explained.

"It could be a short swim if you're going straight across and you're really strong and you're not caught by any of the tides, but realistically you do an 's' shape. How big that 's' is really depends on the weather and how strong you all are as swimmers.

"It should take anywhere between 12 and 17 hours, so we'll all swim maybe three or four times. I swim about three kilometres, my brother Ken will swim four and the other girls will swim three kilometres each as well."

If you would like to donate towards the cause which Mercedes is raising money for, you can do so here.