Ross Edgley interrupted his huge swim to come to the aid of 30 beached whales – and says it was one of the best experiences of his life(Image: PA)
Endurance swimmer Ross Edgley has told how one of the best experiences he had while trying to circumnavigate Iceland was a mercy dash to save 30 pilot whales which had got stuck in sand.
The 40-year old already has the world record for swimming around Great Britain, now Channel 4 viewers are watching him attempt the same feat with Iceland. And in next week’s episode he’ll be seen forgetting all about his 114 day swim as he and the crew race to a beach in order to help with the wildlife rescue effort.
He said they knew they had to jump into action after the boat was sheltering from a storm and a desperate plea for help came on social media, because 30 pilot whales had beached themselves nearby.
Ross decided to take on Iceland having set the world record for swimming around GB(Image: PA)
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“Half the team were in the pub but we got them, half cut, and we all rushed down there. Imagine a car stuck in sand, these whales are huge and you are pushing and pulling them by hand,” he told the Mirror.
“They had given up, they were lying there, they looked lifeless but then they’d open an eye, flick a tail. You’d get goosebumps, a lump in your throat, tears in your eyes.
“I didn’t realise I was going to get so emotional. We managed to save all 30 of them. It just felt so good to forget to swim for a moment and do something that was a once in a lifetime moment. None of us will ever forget what that felt like.”
Ross and Linford Christie share a laugh during a previous challenge(Image: DAILY RECORD)
During his epic swim, in which he nearly succumbed to hypothermia in the first few hours, he encountered peaceful basking sharks and orca, but Ross says saving the whales was his best wildlife experience by far.
The carefully planned trip had him swimming 12 miles per day, starting from the west of Iceland, near Reykjavic, and travelling clockwise. The project is partly a scientific expedition with the University of Iceland wanting the team to collect eDNA samples to track biodiversity around Iceland to a level of detail not seen before. “They said they wanted to create a sporting spectacle and needed someone stupid enough to swim around Iceland. I was like, ‘look, I know a guy – hold my beer’,” Ross declared.
He says the whole of his support team were staggeringly good and had to suffer plenty of hardship themselves. “When you’re in an Arctic storm, I’m in the water, so I can move with the swell, and if it’s raining, I’m already wet. But people on the boat are just getting absolutely smashed, so I did feel worse for them.”
Ross with Sir Chris Hoy during a cycling challenge(Image: PA)
Part of his training involved him putting on 15 kilos so he had a layer of insulation to help him for the 12 hours a day he’d be spending in the water. “For weeks I was just trying to get as fat as possible to become like a whale,” he says admitting that the hours and hours of swimming in freezing temperatures was “just so hard”.
Sometimes he’d have to crack the ice off his wetsuit to put it on and, with the chafing he suffered, said it felt like rubbing sandpaper into an open wound. For all the beautiful moments with sunshine and dolphins and rainbows, there were many that were filled with storms and rain and wind and endless amounts of cold. “So often you just have to swim with discipline where there’s zero enjoyment and you are just doing it because you said you were going to do it,” he says.
And then his tongue started to show signs of rotting. “The human body’s not meant to be in saltwater for 12 hours a day for 114 days,” he says. “So the tongue falling off was pretty bad, but we actually got a handle on that. Coconut oil was the best remedy, it keeps the moisture in.”
Having hung out with top athletes including Linford Christie and Sir Chris Hoy, and become friends with Bear Grylls, Ross is thrilled he is now being approached with ideas for weird swimming challenges, because he’s getting known for them. “If you need a really strange person to swim around a country, there’s probably not many people you can ring,” he laughed.
“I have a reputation for doing these strange events that I think any company or charity or university, if they say, ‘Ross, there’s a stretch of water, there’s an ocean, there’s a country that we need someone to go and swim’. Then I go, ‘right, my goggles are ready’.
– The Great Icelandic Swim with Ross Edgley continues Saturday 14 February, Channel 4, 7pm
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