By the time even yoghurt tastes ‘spicy’, you know something has gone very wrong. For Ross Edgley, that moment came somewhere off the Icelandic coast, after weeks of swallowing salt water, tackling daily marathon-distance swims, and watching the lining of his mouth quite literally begin to rot. ‘Salt water tongue’, as he calls it, sounds faintly lighthearted until you realise it means exposed nerve endings and even the tamest of foods becoming borderline inedible.
It’s also a grim entry point into understanding just how extreme his latest feat really was.
Last summer, Edgley set out to become the first person to swim around the entire coastline of Iceland – a journey of roughly 1,000 miles, spread across 116 days, through waters that start at ‘unforgiving’ before veering into ‘actively hostile to human life’.
If you followed his previous exploits – most notably becoming the first person to swim around Great Britain – you’ll know that Edgley has former when it comes to redefining what aquatic endurance looks like. Iceland upped the ante in terms of conditions weathered though. He swam through 60-foot waves and hurricane systems. He dealt with hypothermia, relentless seasickness, rotting salt wounds and the threat of rhabdomyolysis – a potentially fatal condition where muscle tissue begins to break down under extreme stress. At one point, his urine turned dark brown, a red flag no endurance athlete ever wants to see. And still, most days, he got back in the water.
Courtesy of Ross Edgley
The story – in all of it’s brutal, strange, and occasionally gross glory – is now being told in full in The Great Icelandic Swim with Ross Edgley, a new three-part documentary series airing on Channel 4 from March 7.
Each episode charts a different stretch of Iceland’s coastline, from the storm-lashed west, to the Arctic north, and finally the volatile east and south, where melting glaciers, volcanic terrain and a late-season hurricane threatened to end the swim for good.
Along the way Edgley helps rescue stranded pilot whales, swims alongside feeding humpbacks, and collects environmental DNA (eDNA) samples from the surrounding waters – a low-key but meaningful scientific thread running through the expedition; designed to help researchers better understand Iceland’s marine biodiversity and inform future conservation efforts. Between swims, he wanders through fishing villages, listens to local folklore, and reflects on why he’s drawn to this particular flavour of hardship in the first place.
There’s also a much more personal pressure running bubbling underneath the whole adventure. Back home, Edgley’s partner, Hester Sabery, was pregnant with their first child. Every storm delay and every forced rest day, tightened the timeline, creating a very real ultimatum… Finish the swim, or miss the birth. A human twist to Edgley’s usual superhuman feats.
Edgley himself describes the Iceland swim as ‘the most extreme, brutal swim I’ve ever undertaken,’ pushing him to the brink physically and mentally. Others are less understated. Chris Hemsworth calls it ‘an epic saga’ that rewrites the limits of endurance, while Bear Grylls – a man who knows from experience – say that surviving rough, ice-cold seas like these ‘takes commitment and resilience to another level.
And yes, if you’re wondering: his tongue did recover. Eventually.
The Great Icelandic Swim with Ross Edgley airs on Channel 4 from March 7.
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With almost 18 years in the health and fitness space as a personal trainer, nutritionist, breath coach and writer, Andrew has spent nearly half of his life exploring how to help people improve their bodies and minds.
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