Alnwick mum Gill Castle looks ahead to next big challenge after Channel swim

On September 12 2023, Gill became the first ostomate to ever swim the English channel after years of training and preparing for the challenge, all to fundraise for helping women with stomas in Kenya.

She swam from Dover to France in just under 14 hours, managing to raise thousands and even received an international award nomination.

After a difficult childbirth in 2011, Gill has a permanent stoma, which is a surgery that treats a range of illnesses and trauma to the abdomen and allows bodily fluid to pass into a pouch or ostomy bag on the outside of the body.

This procedure took Gill on a journey that has since seen her swim the North Sea in a bikini, swim 21 miles across the English Channel and soon a new foreign challenge.

Over £36,000 was raised for Gill’s charity, Chameleon Buddies, which she founded in 2022 to support women in the Northumberland and Kenya who are struggling with adapting to life after childbirth or stoma surgery.

They give hope to women and their families by providing support groups and taking surplus stoma equipment from the NHS, that would otherwise go to waste, to Kenya for those who have little or no access to ostomy supplies.

Gill said: “I just wanted to show them that I thought they were important. They were then amazed that I would do such a thing.

"Normally when you do fundraising, you don't really get to see in actual life the difference it makes to people so I feel very privileged to be honest that I do get to see it all the way through.”

On her social media platforms, Gill documented her progress and achievements, but also collaborated with the BBC on a BBC Sounds series as well as a documentary on iPlayer that aired in December 2023, both titled ‘The Stoma Swimmer’.

She spoke about her son’s birth and everything that subsequently led up to her swimming the channel and the documentary showed Gill and her team helping other women by overcoming the stigma and guiding on ostomy supplies in Kenya.

Gill has many success stories, including baby Joy Blessing and her mother Metty, who met Gill online in 2021, and, as it explains in the documentary, was too afraid to wash herself due to her stoma before getting the support she needed from the support group.

"Joy Blessing is Metty’s little baby, which was just fantastic because I'm not sure if she would have been here if we hadn’t have intervened a couple of years ago, which is just amazing, really,” Gill added.

The World Open Water Swimming Association (WOWSA) announced Gill was made the final 10 list as a nominee for the 2023 awards in the Adaptive Performance of the Year category, thanks to public nominations and her hard work. You can vote for Gill on WOWSA’s website.

Gill’s next fundraiser will be another trip to Africa in October 2025 but this time just over the Kenyan border to Tanzania, where she will tackle Mount Kilimanjaro. Chameleon Buddies will be opening applications for people to join them, so if you’re interested, keep an eye out on the charity’s website.