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| Photos: Kelvin Trautman |
Endurance swimmer Lewis Pugh has already suffered his first jellyfish sting on the opening day of his mission to swim the entire 350-mile length of the English Channel.
Pugh set off on his gruelling 50-day challenge from Land’s End in Cornwall yesterday, and over the next couple of months he plans to swim all the way to Dover wearing just a pair of Speedo trunks, swimming goggles and swim cap.
The 48-year-old had always anticipated encounters with jellyfish, and a painful sting in an even more painful area — his crotch — was perhaps not the English Channel welcome he was hoping for.
Pain aside, Pugh managed to cover a distance of six miles on his first day of swimming as he and his support crew familiarised each other with the processes of the expedition.
The team ended day one anchored just off Mousehole, and he was due to resume swimming at 6am this morning from the exact GPS location he exited the water yesterday.
Pugh is no stranger to taking on cold waters without a wetsuit. He has completed long-distance swims in all the world’s oceans, including the Arctic and Antarctic.
But for this swimming pioneer, it is about far more than just the challenge of an open water swim. Pugh is campaigning for greater conservation of our seas and oceans.
“Our world needs clean and healthy seas,” he said. “And we are the only ones who can make that happen. This swim will mark the beginning of a worldwide campaign to ensure that 30% of our oceans are fully protected by 2030.
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“In addition, we need to change the tide on plastic pollution by stopping the amount of plastic pouring into our oceans — and roll up our sleeves to help remove the junk that’s already there.
“Changing the world’s oceans for the better starts with us, and it starts at home.”
Swimming across the English Channel isn’t unusual. Nearly 2,000 swimmers have completed the 21-mile crossing from England to France.
However, swimming the entire length of the Channel is a whole different proposition. It’s the equivalent of swimming 16 English Channel crossings back-to-back, and it’s going to get extremely cold.
“The average temperature of an English Channel swim is 14°C to 18°C,” he said before setting off. “After swimming in it for 10 or 15 hours, that feels like ice.
“Cold and exhaustion will be my biggest adversaries. Not to mention what I meet in the water — the Channel is the world’s busiest shipping lane, and has plenty of jellyfish.
“I’ll be starting off well insulated, weighing about 100kg. At the end of the swim I expect to be very thin.
“It will be a race against time — the water will warm up over the two-month swim duration, but I will be getting thinner and thinner, losing my insulation bit by bit.
“The effect will be cumulative. That cold really gnaws into you when you wake up to it every day. I’ve swum in the coldest waters on Earth, but I expect this to be one of the coldest swims of my life.”
Pugh’s official partner for The Long Swim challenge is Speedo, and he’s aiming to swim six miles per day over the next 50 days to reach his Dover destination at the end of August.