Ross Edgley

Edgley's support boat Hecate

Between June and November 2018, Edgley completed a 157-day 1,792 miles (2,884 km) swim around Britain.[10] Aided by a team of experts which monitored the tides and his health in his 16 metres (52 ft) support boat Hecate, he typically swam for six hours, rested for six hours, and then swam for another six hours on repeat.[11] He typically consumed around 15,000 calories a day.[12]

The gruelling swim took its toll on his body, disintegrating his tongue through the eroding effect of the salt, giving him "Rhino Neck" from the effect of the wetsuit rubbing, and his feet entirely losing their arches and turning a deep purple and yellow. The team treated him with Sudocrem, Vaseline, plasters, bin bags and duct tape.[11] Edgley's journey was documented as a weekly internet series, "Ross Edgley's Great British Swim", produced by Red Bull TV.

After completing the swim in Margate on 4 November 2018, the World Open Water Swimming Association announced it as the World Swim of the Year 2018 and it became officially recognised as "The World's Longest Staged Sea Swim."[13] Talking about his historic swim Edgley said, "It's my hope that people remember the Great British Swim as an example or experiment in both mental and physical fortitude."[14]

During his circumnavigation swim of Great Britain, Edgley also broke several other records. Notably this involved becoming the first person to swim the length of the English Channel from Dover to Land's End, over 350 miles (563 km) in 30 days. Edgley never celebrated the achievement, however, and instead joked it was only a "warm up" because he still had 1,442 miles to swim (and 127 days at sea) before he completed his much larger mission and arrived back in Margate, Kent.

Edgley also accidentally became the fastest person to swim the 900 miles (1,400 km) from Land's End to John o' Groats in 62 days.[12] More than halving the time of the previous record (from Sean Conway of 135 days), Edgley and his crew said they did not realise they had broken another record and were just trying to swim fast enough to avoid an Arctic storm approaching from Iceland. He then became the first person to swim the length of the Moray Firth, before heading to the English border at Berwick-upon-Tweed where he joked, "It was all downhill from here".

On 23 September 2022, Edgley attempted a charity swim in Loch Ness.[15] In preparation for the extreme endurance event and to counteract the cold effect of continual immersion in water, he gained 10 kilos of weight by consuming 10,000 calories a day.[16]

After 52 hours and 39 minutes he was forced to end his swim early due to the onset of cellulitis and hypothermia and was taken to hospital where he messaged: "As you can probably tell the swim didn’t entirely go to plan, but the awareness raised for the charity was immense which makes the cellulitis and lost skin worth it."[17][18] The swim was done in support of Parley for the Oceans (a nonprofit environmental organisation that focuses on ocean conservation), so was not governed by any swimming authority. The route and precise distance are unknown due to medical intervention.