THE Borderline Challenge

Alex and Hugh - The Borderline Challenge 2025

Content kindly written by Hugh Addison:

"Last summer I found myself in a dangerous position. I had recently completed The Lakes Traverse, a 100km crossing of the Lake District along the first stage of Wainwright’s coast to coast route. This was a huge achievement for me and my sister, Alex, who had spawned the idea. Of course, now the eternal question of what to do next had begun to raise its head. I’d been filling my summer with sprint triathlons and was keen to improve my woeful swimming technique, so an ultra-triathlon felt like just the challenge for 2025. I had recently heard that the Arch2Arc record had been broken by an English bloke, so my research started with entering Paul Robinson’s name into YouTube. I found an interview in which he scoped out his preparations for his mammoth undertaking and the challenge itself. I was spell bound, the challenge sounded amazing, though still somewhat beyond my ability. I messaged Paul via Instagram later that day and was thankful to receive a quick response filled with encouragement to pursue my own challenge and the endorsement to eat like a bin for a year to ensure I was suitably prepared for open water swimming. This was all I needed.

I began to scope out my own route, one that was personal to myself and unique in its application. As a result, The Borderline Challenge (BLC) was born. The BLC mirrors much of the Arch2Arc in terms of distances, though differs principally in it being based around a crossing of The North Channel between Northern Ireland and Scotland rather than the English Channel between England and France. Both bodies of water are similar in distance, and both have viscous tides and reputations. However, the cold temperature of The Irish Sea and its reputation for jelly fish make it a fearsome proposition. Nevertheless, this was the basis of my challenge, a crossing I’d completed numerous times on childhood holidays to visit my Irish family in the northwest corner of the island.

If this was to be the swim component, then the cycle would need to shoulder the majority of the land-based distance. A two-legged approach was chosen spanning the breadth of Ireland from Sligo to Donaghadee and Scotland from Portpatrick to Gretna. This would provide the ideal setup for a run along Hadrian’s Wall from Gretna to Tynemouth. This could be done over four days I felt, particularly if my amateur swimming ability could be supported by tackling the North Channel as a relay instead of a solo swim. Thankfully my sister once again came to my aid and offered to join for the whole undertaking whilst friends I’d done a 70.3 with two years earlier offered their support for the swim. The BLC was now ready and waiting, a 400km cycle, 10km swim (of a 40km crossing) and a 120km run. That was a challenge.

Paul’s advice and constant support was critical to us even believing that we could achieve this. His wisdom was crucial to our preparations, particularly for the swim and our approach to nutrition for a multi-day event. Over the yearlong preparation, we spoke regularly and every kudos or like on training content was a small advocation of our efforts. A couple of weeks before our start date in September 2025, Alex and I checked in for a final time and were reminded of the huge levels of organisation that are required for such endeavours. Paul provided examples of the methodical planning and support activities he’d put to good use in the Arch-Arc, in turn these provided the foundation of our BLC documents for the team and ourselves. Paul’s experience made the BLC a reality.

When it came to undertaking The Borderline, we found ourselves in the optimum position to begin. Everything was laid out when we left Sligo on the 13th of September, apart from…of course…the Irish weather. Unfortunately, we got caught between Atlantic storms that shrunk our opportunity to cross the channel to a glimmer, and we ultimately were forced to abandon the swim and focus on completing the remainder of the challenge’s cycle and run legs before substituting the Irish Sea for Ullswater – a swim of equivalent distance and temperature, if not tides. Paul once again helped to advocate this decision given his experience tackling the Dovercoaster of emotions linking to Channel swim windows.

We ultimately completed the challenge in 7 days and 9 hours. One could say that extra time was disappointing, and they would be correct. Though that does not take away from the utter sense of achievement of having crossed the entire breadth British and Irish Isles under our own steam and mapping out a challenge which I hope someone will one day complete following our own steps. Whether we will be those people in 2026, remains to be seen, but with professional guidance like that that Paul gave to us this year, I’m hopeful that the confidence we need will rise once more."