London to Cairo

Distance: 10,000 km

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Progress
Challenge
Prizes
Audience: United Kingdom
Ranked by: Total Swim Time
This September, we're settling an age-old rivalry once and for all — who swims further and faster, the North or the South? Are you looking for some extra motivation to get those extra few laps in? Look no further! We have 250 spots available on each team to battle it out over a 10,000km swim from London to Cairo! This is a Team Battle where each team needs to fill its spots before the starting whistle blows. Once we've got everyone on board, the challenge kicks off and each team has 100 days to reach the finish line. That will mean an average of 40km per team member. To avoid any arguments about who the REAL northerners are, teams will be allocated based on your local pools position below/above Englands official 'mid-point'. You don't need to be a swimming superhero to join the battle, but be prepared to put the laps in for this one. The winning team will be decided based on their total swimming time (rather than first across the line) so keep an eye out for the final result once both teams finish. A pair of Zoggs predator goggles is up for grabs and a winner picked at random from all those whose team completes the challenge. You can bag your team slot now just head to the Challenge section! *Depending on participation we may need to rebalance the teams / challenge duration. We are aiming to start mid-september.Two capital cities. One on the Thames, one on the Nile. Between them lies 10,000 kilometres of open water, three seas, fourteen countries and the entire length of European summer. This is the long way to Egypt — the way the water goes. You leave London on a falling tide, past mudflats and container cranes, and swim out into the English Channel: grey, cold, and the busiest shipping lane on Earth. Chalk cliffs slide away behind you. Then comes Brittany's granite, the wide brown mouth of the Loire near Nantes, and the long straight beaches south of Bordeaux where the Gironde spills into the Atlantic. The Bay of Biscay does not do calm — expect swell that arrives from a storm you'll never see. Green Spain and the Atlantic edge (1,000 – 3,000 km) Rounding into northern Spain, the coast turns to cliffs, cider and cold clean water. Galicia's rías cut deep inland; the Costa da Morte earned its name honestly. Turn south at Finisterre and the Atlantic pushes you down Portugal — Porto, the Tagus estuary at Lisbon, the golden cliffs of the Algarve — until the Gulf of Cádiz narrows and everything funnels toward a single 14-kilometre gap. Through the Gate (3,000 – 4,500 km) The Strait of Gibraltar is the great gate of this journey. Africa is close enough to read. Atlantic water pours east through the surface current, and for the first time you're swimming with the ocean rather than against it. Beyond it, everything changes: warmer, saltier, bluer. You track the Spanish coast past Málaga, Cabo de Gata, Alicante and Valencia to Barcelona, where the Pyrenees drop into the Mediterranean. The middle sea (4,500 – 7,000 km) Now the open crossings begin. Out past the Balearics to Sardinia, into the Tyrrhenian, and along the Italian shin to the Bay of Naples with Vesuvius standing over it. Through the Strait of Messina, around Sicily's shoulder, across the channel toward Tunis and Malta, then east into the Ionian. This is the sea of Odysseus, and by now you'll have some sympathy for him. Islands and the Levant (7,000 – 9,000 km) Greece arrives in fragments — the Peloponnese, a scatter of Aegean islands, Crete lying long across the horizon, Rhodes at the corner. Then the Turkish coast, where pine hills fall straight into water so clear it stops feeling like distance at all. Antalya, the Lycian shore, and a final island: Cyprus, the last land before the crossing nobody talks about. The Levantine basin and the Nile (9,000 – 10,000 km) South now, across open sea with no coast to reassure you, until the water goes pale and silty and you realise the Nile has reached you before Egypt has. Landfall at the Delta — Alexandria, Port Said, Rosetta — and then upstream, against the current, through a green ribbon of farmland fifteen kilometres wide with desert on either side. The last kilometre is the Nile at Cairo. Look right: the Pyramids of Giza, four and a half thousand years old, and you swam here from London. 10,000 km. Two continents. One very long swim.

Zoggs Predator Goggles

Prize 1

Winner will be picked at random from all those that complete the challenge successfully

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