English Channel · solo swims from England, 2014–2026
Every successful solo swim from England to France with a GPS track, traced from the beach where the swimmer walked into the sea to the beach where they climbed out in France. Each red dot is where a swimmer landed.
Successful crossings by the hour in which the swimmer landed. Watch the time-lapse: the first swimmers reach France while most are still in mid-Channel.
Hourly weather from the Sandettie lightvessel in the middle of the Strait, averaged over the hours of each swim, with crossings grouped by how long they took. Every crossing together is the yardstick.
The tracks come from the pilot boats' GPS (AIS) logs, recorded every few minutes, and from Observer Reports where the GPS is missing, matched to every England-to-France solo swim ratified by the Channel Swimming Association or the Channel Swimming & Piloting Federation since 2014. The boat stays within a few metres of the swimmer, so its path is the swim's path.
Each track runs from the recorded start time to the recorded finish, which removes the boat's run out from Dover and its journey home. The boat cannot follow the swimmer onto the beach, so each end is extended from the last fixes to the shore, following the swimmer's drift; the red dot is that landing point. For two-way and longer swims only the first crossing, England to France, is shown.
Weather comes from the Sandettie lightvessel (WMO 62304): the Met Office's quality-controlled hourly record, and the live NDBC feed for recent weeks. Each swim gets the average of the hours it spent in the water; "at the start" and "at the end" are its first and last two hours.
In the time-lapse every swim starts at hour zero, whatever its date, so all of them can be compared on one clock.
Source: channel-swims.info, the database of English Channel crossings, built from CSA and CSPF records. © Julian Critchlow 2026.