Alison’s Arctic Adventure: Swimming in the Arctic Circle

Alison smashed her Swim the Arctic Circle challenge swimming between Sweden and Finland in the River Torne on Saturday 12th July.

Congratulations Alison!

She entered both a daytime 2000m (2km) swim and later the same day, midnight, the 3000m (3km) swim which took her across borders and time zones.

She completed the second swim, 3km, in less than an hour so she actually finished before her start time. Started in Finland at 12.05am on Sunday 13th July 2025 and finished in Sweden at 11.47pm on Saturday 12th July 2025! 

Mind-boggling! 

Now, you’d expect this to be meat and drink to a keen chilly dipper but, the fact is, Alison had never swum more than a couple of hundred metres in open water and from February this year, was taking swimming lessons to improve her front crawl technique.

Wait… WHAT?

To be fair, Alison’s a regular with the Wirral Bluetits Chill Swimmers since May 2021, so her frequent meets at Leasowe Bay, in the cold Irish Sea, where Alison says she “splashed around a little,” will have more than prepared her for the plunge in what might (fingers crossed) a cool 16-19 degrees centigrade. (15°C and less is officially coooooolllllld, brrrrrrrrrr!)

Did anyone mention that Alison was once caught up in a riptide at Leasowe Bay? That a rescue helicopter, which was sent to assist because the boat would have taken too long, landed just as four or five other strong swimmers had scrambled her to the shore? That she needed treatment for hypothermia? No? Well, it happened!

And still, a little more cautious nowadays, Alison and friends, Sarah and Wendy who joined her in Lapland (they didn’t see Santa, sadly) will continue to enjoy “swimberling” (dipping and bobbing around) the Wirral coast.

Alison paid her own way for the challenge and with her little mascot, Swimberling. Mini.Me, has achieved it while raising vital funds for the hospice. (A link to Alison’s Just Giving page is here and below).

An OT’s life and those of their patients is for living

Alison gained her BSc degree in occupational therapy in 2001 from the University of Northampton. Work had taken her mum, Pam, originally from Wallasey, and her dad, Eddie, from Manchester, ‘down south’ where Alison and her sister grew up.

Many a happy school holiday was spent on the Wirral visiting her grandmother. Years later her parents retired and moved back to the Wirral and now only live around the corner to Alison and her family in Hoylake.

When qualified, Alison came to the Wirral and started her OT career at Arrowe Park Hospital working across all departments, including A&E, acute and rehabilitation wards and spent five years at Clatterbridge Cancer Centre. Before joining us at the hospice, she worked in the wheelchair service at St Catherine’s in Birkenhead. 

Before joining us at the hospice, she worked in the wheelchair service at St Catherine’s in Birkenhead.

Alison’s now an integral part of the patient and family support services team rat the hospice and she’s really enthusiastic about her colleagues and her work as an OT,

“There’s a great spirit at the hospice.

My fellow OT, Katy, Physiotherapist, Miriam, and our therapy assistant, Tracy, are a great therapy team. We work with all of our multi-disciplinary team colleagues so that we understand fully what matters most to each of our patients and how we can help.

An occupational therapist helps people of all ages overcome challenges completing everyday tasks or activities. They look at the relationships between the activities you do every day – your occupations – alongside the challenges you face and your environment. Part of my role as an occupational therapist is to empower people to help themselves by providing advice to enable them to keep doing what they love and need to do.  

As well as supporting patients in the in-patient unit, we facilitate education groups in the wellbeing centre. These education groups aim to provide non-medical ways of managing symptoms.   

We facilitate FAB (fatigue, anxiety and breathlessness) sessions in working with outpatients, inpatients and our Wellbeing Centre, day services,  patients.

We’ll also assess everything, from being able to get around at home, making a cup of tea, getting in and out of a bath, right up to ward discharge planning, including assessments to establish the adaptations people may need at home so that they can be as independent as possible outside of the hospice.  

We start from the premise that life is for living and we’ll work with each patient and their family to ensure they can live a fulfilled everyday life, despite their illnesses.

It’s such an important and rewarding job.”

In her own, full, home life, Alison is married to Alex and they have children, Rebekah and Zach and a dog called Remy, who is a scruffy mutt and nothing like the fine cognac, Remy Martin, apparently.

Everyone at the hospice says, ‘many congratulations Alison’ and thank you for helping us to raise those much appreciated funds.

If you’d like to sponsor Alison for the chilly Arctic Circle swim she smashed for the hospice, here’s a link at justgiving.com/page/alisonmartinarcticswim 

To learn a little more about occupational therapy services at Wirral Hospice St John’s please visit wirralhospice.org/occupationaltherapy