Mike Dawson

Mike's English Channel Swim

Fundraising for Multiple Sclerosis Society
£3,843
raised of £8,000 target
Donations cannot currently be made to this page
Mike's English Channel Swim, 27 September 2017
Multiple Sclerosis Society

Verified by JustGiving

RCN 1139257
We are the MS Society. We are strong enough to stop MS together.

Story

I’m aiming to be the first person with MS to solo swim the channel, I guess there’s a few reasons for this which I’ll aim to tell all over the coming months in my preparation for one of the worlds’ hardest solo challenges.

OK, what’s the big deal? and where’s the English channel? (for those that aren’t from the UK)
The English Channel is the stretch of sea between England and France, it’s generally cold, 16C or 60F on a good day. The distance is around 21 miles or 34km, as a straight line, with the tide it’s further than that. Oh and it just happens to be the worlds busiest shipping lane too, so what could possibly go wrong during a 15 hour swim?!

There’s a number of reasons why I want to do this and do this now while I still can, none of us know when we could be dealt an unfortunate hand in life. This is indeed one of the reasons why I want to do this, I want to raise awareness of what MS is and isn’t. It isn’t a death sentence, it doesn’t mean you’ll be confined to a life of disability, it doesn’t mean you’ll not be able to follow your dreams, it doesn’t mean you’ll be dependent on others for the rest of your days. Sure it affects everyone in different ways and rarely are two MS’ers the same - note how I didn’t use the term ‘sufferer’ and yes, some days are not good, some days it’s difficult to do the basic things in life.

One thing that I’ve realised is that ‘One Day’ never arrives. One Day I’m going to do… One Day I’ll do that, well with MS the day that you’re planning to do something or are able to do something might have gone so embrace life and get out there and do it.

Apart from being a good role model for Abigail, I’d like to raise money for a very worthy charity that helps MS’ers both day to day and with research in finding a way to halt this disease, turn it around and repair the damage done. So please forgive me for asking for your support and indeed if you know of a company or brand that would like to be associated with my Challenge over the coming year it would not only be helping make a positive change to MS in the future but will offer them some tremendous brand awareness to be associated with this immense challenge.

I look forward to welcoming you all along for the journey and I apologies for the amount of video and pictures that will show me in my trunks!

Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving - they'll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they'll send your money directly to the charity. So it's the most efficient way to donate - saving time and cutting costs for the charity.

Share this story

Help Mike Dawson

Sharing this page with your friends could help raise up to 3x more in donations

You can also help by sharing this link on

About the charity

Multiple Sclerosis Society

Verified by JustGiving

RCN 1139257
Over 150,000 of us in the UK have MS. It’s unpredictable and different for everyone. But it doesn’t have to be this way. We’re the MS Society. We understand what life’s like with MS. We're here for you through the highs, lows and everything in between. Together, we are strong enough to stop MS.

Donation summary

Total raised
£3,842.31
+ £637.63 Gift Aid
Online donations
£3,772.31
Offline donations
£70.00

* Charities pay a small fee for our service. Find out how much it is and what we do for it.