Brussels team to swim across Channel for refugees

Four Brussels locals have announced they will swim across the English Channel in July to raise money to help refugees. Their team, Carpe Marem, hopes to collect €20,000, writes La Dernière Heure.

In mid-July, the four men, all between 27 and 29 years old, plan to depart from Dover, England, and swim to Calais, France, where the channel is at its narrowest. But the 35-km journey promises to be a tough one, with water temperatures no higher than 18°C. The swimmers will make the trip relay style, relieving one another every hour.

The team will have to adhere to a strict set of rules in order to swim across the Channel, as imposed by the Channel Swimming Association in 1927. These are to ensure that anyone attempting to cross the Channel does so under the same favourable conditions as the Briton Matthew Web, who became the first person to swim across the English Channel in 1875.

Carpe Marem's ultimate goal is to collect money for the organisation Refugees Welcome, which helps refugees with, among other things, school materials and administrative documents.