Back at the end of May, when I first spoke to Ross Edgley, he was bursting with optimism, completely aware of the absurdity of what lay ahead of him but excited nonetheless. He planned to swim the circumference of Britain - a feat no one had yet succeeded in doing - in a challenge he called The Great British Swim. 

At 9 am on Sunday 4th November, crowds gathered on Margate beach to watch the Lincolnshire adventurer cross the finish line after 157 days swimming at sea. In total he had swum a distance of 2,883km, making him the first man to circumnavigate all of Great Britain. 

While Edgley battled jellyfish, whirlpools, tides, storms and a physical toll on his body that would have cut the journey short for your average sportsman, the rest of the nation was delighting in a World Cup, a Royal Wedding (or two) and even followed the story of the 12 Thai boys who were trapped, then released, from a cave. Meanwhile, Edgley, in the words of Dory from Finding Nemo, just kept swimming. 

“I was checking my phone but I missed so much of the World Cup," he says. "When we were in Scotland people kept telling me that Scotland won and for two weeks I honestly believed them and kept saying congratulations,” he laughs. Despite 157 days swimming at sea, a disintegrating tongue, open chafe wounds and an uncontrollable beard, his cheery spirit has stayed steadfast. 

It is one thing to be ambitious and Edgley is certainly that, with a book titled The World’s Fittest Book, but over the four months that he was submerged in the British seas, Edgley was consistent in his determination to swim back into Margate Harbour. Each day, Edgley would dive from the trusted Catamaran (15.75 metres in length) named Hecate, and swim for a total of 12 hours in the open water in cycles of six hours. “I remember on the first day of autumn we were coming out of Aberdeen and I had to scrape ice off of my wet suit before I got in it,” he says. “Once you can swim, you know how to put one arm in front of the other but the hard part is to keep putting the wet suit on, when nobody is forcing you to do it, knowing that if you don’t you won't make it round Great Britain.”  

The weather loomed over Edgley and his team, who faced storm Ali and storm Callum during the journey. “I thought I was gonna be out there having my Christmas dinner, thank goodness I finished before that,” says Edgley, only half joking. In truth, making it around the top of Scotland and out of the water before winter hit was critical.

The former world record holder for swimming from Land’s End to John O’Groats was Sean Conway who did it in 135 days back in 2013. Edgley did it in 62 days. “People were saying ‘that’s amazing’ and I responded with, ‘no it’s not amazing, it was necessary.’ I mean you don’t take boats around Cape Wrath never mind a swimmer so if we didn’t get around the top then we wouldn’t have made Great Britain.” 

During treacherous moments, it was the community of supporters both online and on the journey that provided essential information and support. “We needed to speak to the sailing community, not just surfers or swimmers because at times I was swimming at 8.7kn - that’s twice as fast as Michael Phelps and the cruising speed of a slow Dolphin - if you get that wrong you can end up going backwards at 6kn.” The sailing community offered advice on tides and currents each time Edgley passed through one area and onto the next. ‘They became like an online meeting room where we could brainstorm ideas and I’d be like, ‘guys, we’re going to go through the Irish sea or Cape Wrath, one of the world's most brutal headlands, has anybody got any experience?’ And people would be like, ‘yeah I sailed around that, what you want to do?’” 

It wasn’t just online, throughout the journey sportsmen would come and go, swimming alongside Edgley and offering some company and good advice. “Andrew Cotton, one of Britain’s best surfers, swam with me around Land’s End and he understood the way that the waves would work and how you swim differently in a side-chop compared to a head-on chop or when you’re in a large swell.”

Despite blogging as he went, one of his hardest ordeals happened off camera, when, whilst swimming in the Inner Hebrides he approached a whirlpool. “You approach that with sheer respect and Matt, my Captain, told me I’ve got to swim hard for two hours otherwise I’ll get pulled into it.” 

An hour into the two hours, Edgley was stung by a jellyfish, an average occurrence for this aquatic figure, after all, in a night when the water is dark and ominous, he could be expected to be stung up to fifteen times but this one took its toll. “It was searing into my skin and was so painful but I couldn’t stop because if I stopped, I would’ve fallen into the whirlpool.” 

He continued to swim for an hour until he was free to rear his head and shout out to Captain Matt that he’d be stung. “My shoulders and face were burning and Matt looked at me and goes, ‘yeah I know you’ve been stung. The jellyfish is still wrapped around your face.’” Its thin silky tentacles had gotten caught between his cap and goggles. 

It wasn’t the first exchange between the two that seemed otherworldly. “I also got stung by a jellyfish that attacks your central nervous system so you start itching,” laughs Edgley, a little too nonchalant. “I was fine on my face but my feet and legs had this deep itch.” 

It was 3 o’clock in the morning somewhere across the Irish Sea, with the small crew asleep, when Captain Matt found Edgley walking around the deck naked. “He was like, ‘mate what are you doing?’ I think he thought I’d snapped but I was just trying to soothe my skin in the breeze.” 

To keep going, Edgley ate a mammoth 10,000-15,000 calories a day and it is estimated that he burnt 505,219 calories in total. When we spoke over four months ago, he had expected to eat a liquidised diet but he quickly adapted to changing circumstances.

“My diet had to be calorie dense and nutrient dense at the same, so I looked after my immune system and didn’t get ill during the 157 days. On top of that, with my tongue disintegrating from the salt things like granola ended up feeling like sandpaper. Plus food had to be digestible so it wouldn’t give me seasickness. If you’re going swimming and you’ve got a litre of liquid in your stomach you’re going to immediately feel sick and nauseous.” The liquidised diet was out then. Instead, his final diet consisted of a lot of nut butter, oats and over 600 bananas. 

It is perhaps the grimmest of videos from his journey, Edgley pulling parts off of his tongue off into his hand due to exposure to salt for too long. Whilst he assures me that after the first week, his tongue adapted and is now pretty robust (the chafing on his neck also healed and scarred with rough skin which prevented further chafing) it did attract a buzz of horrified millennials online. “I felt so bad because people kept tagging their friends on social media when they were watching the Red Bull blog series and the friends would respond with, ‘that’s disgusting, why did you tag me in that?’ But I was so grateful that we got to show that side, warts and all.” 

Mentally, this was no Strongman - Edgley has already climbed the height of Everest on a rope in one sitting, done a marathon whilst dragging a Mini behind him, and swum 100km in the Caribbean in just 32 hours whilst attached to a 100lb log. “I always tried to swim with a smile,” he says and I believe him. “With a conventional sport like a marathon, you can grit your teeth and get through it because ultimately you’re going to be in a warm bed at the end of it and recover all week.” 

For the Great British Swim, Edgley had to think differently. “If I was stressed my cortisol levels would spike which can affect your immune system and inflammatory response. So I swam with a smile to ensure I was in this permanent state of being serene but focused, which is a weird mindset to be in.” 

There were some moments that made that mindset less of a struggle. Such as a breaching minke whale guiding him to Wales across the Bristol Channel or when an open water swimmer, named Iona, swam one handed to the boat with a hot fruitcake in the other hand. Or, during the last mile, when 300 supporters swam alongside him, leading him through Margate Harbour and then cheered, as Edgley finally stepped foot on dry land. 

It has been a journey of immensity, challenging human endurance. In total, Edgley has gained 5kg and whilst he hasn’t emerged covered in algae and scales, his feet, he says, are as soft as a baby’s and he’s got a lot of physio to do in order to use them again.  “I have to learn to walk again. My feet kind of curve out and the arch of my foot is non-existent. I missed leg day for 157 days so the smaller intrinsic muscles of your feet and legs that you probably overlook like your Achilles tendon, I just haven’t been using.” 

As he crossed the finish line, he was simply relieved that he didn’t faceplant the floor, “my balance is a little off,” he says, sincerely.

For his first night on land, Edgley relished in the central heating (“I haven’t been warm in 157 days”) but secretly yearned for the water. “I’ll probably swim tomorrow,” he admits. “There’ll be no jellyfish or wet suits, it’ll be nice just to swim.”