Viva Brighton Issue #64 June 2018

INTERVIEW
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Simon Murie
SwimTrek founder
So how do you go about swimming from Europe
to Asia? The swim across the Dardanelles straits in
north-western Turkey takes around an hour but,
as Simon Murie found out, getting the necessary
permissions and finding a willing boat to escort
you across takes a great deal longer. “It’s a very
hard swim to organise” he tells me, “Gallipoli
on one side, Troy on the other. The area is so
militarised.” But he did the groundwork and
made the trip and there began an even longer
journey: founding SwimTrek, the first open water
swimming adventure holiday company. He’s still
organising epic swims almost 20 years later.
“We can sort out anything to do with open water
swimming. Whether that’s swimming from island
to island, swimming down the river Thames,
or taking people across the Hellespont, where
Leander swam across to his lover Hero in Greek
Mythology… It’s about swimming in places where
there’s a reason to do it, where you wouldn’t
normally be able to go.”
From their HQ in Hove, they organise swims in
40 worldwide locations, arranging local guides
and safety boats for swims in Lithuania, Greece,
Slovenia, Oman, the Maldives, Russia… Simon
spends much of his time devising new itineraries.
“We’re increasingly developing the wilder, more
exotic destinations. Like Galapagos, Komodo and
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