i want to get back to the very youthful lewis pugh, a teenager living at the time in cape town, south africa, who decided he was going to swim out offshore to reach that rocky outcrop, robben island. it was your first significant sea swim. yes. at that point try and remember what motivated you to do it? i think geography moulds you. so, where you grow up moulds you. and i had initially grown up in england, in plymouth, and my mother told me a story. i was about four years old and my school was literally on the hoe, looking out over the sea, and i would see the ships leaving and going out over the horizon and i would say to her, mum, one day, i want to be on one of those ships . and then, we moved out to south africa when i was ten and then, eventually settling in cape town when i was 17 years old, and one of my friends had swum from robben island back to cape town. and those waters are treacherous. well, they re really, really cold and from my history classroom, i could see robbe