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Open water swimmer Ross Edgley suffered his first stinging encounter with a swarm of jellyfish as his Great British Swim challenge approached the South West this week.
Edgley is three weeks into his bid to swim the entire coast of mainland Britain, having covered more than 300 miles and burning 75,000 calories in the process since leaving Margate.
But the toll it is taking on the strongman’s body is clear to see, with the jellyfish attack just the latest in a series of gruesome and painful injuries.
Last week, Edgley woke up to find chunks of his own tongue on his pillow. This was caused by the effects of ‘salt mouth’ which left him struggling to eat, swallow or talk (see left for an image shared by Edgley on Twitter). He managed to treat it with coconut oil.
He’s also been left with a nasty wound on the back of his neck caused by the chafing that comes with spending so long swimming in the water, which he’s been treating with anti-chafing creams and duct tape.
So when Edgley swam directly into a swarm of jellyfish, and was bombarded with stings to the nose and face, it added even more discomfort to an already gruelling challenge.
“The first one wasn’t so bad,” he said on his Red Bull vlog. “But once I took the tenth one straight to the face, I popped my head up. I turned to Dom, who was on the rib at the time, and said ‘I’m swimming in jellyfish’.
“He laughed and said I was being dramatic. Then they got the big light, we got some footage and it was just crazy.
“It started to get to the point where my face was numb. It was stinging so bad, it was just throbbing.”
Despite all the pain, Edgley is remaining determined and positive as he begins to swim around the Cornish coast this week. One 24-hour period late last week saw the swimmer cover more than 30 miles, which was a welcome morale boost.
Edgley said: “It feels amazing, not just because we’ve overachieved on our daily target, but it comes on the back of the roughest week I’ve ever had competing in any sport.
“Just knowing that every single day you had a target to hit so, although you had an open wound that was only getting worse, you still had to make peace with the fact you had to go in and for 12 hours a day it was just grinding and grating on that open wound.
“If you’re prepared to really ride out everything that is unpleasant about it, you will come out the other side stronger, fitter, more robust and more durable.
“There have been times when I’ve been swimming at night through waves and currents, and my shoulders are on fire. I could stop, I could just get back on the boat and go to sleep, but that circumnavigation swim all around Great Britian isnt going to happen any faster if I do that.”
On Tuesday morning, Edgley was approaching Falmouth as he swims closer to Britain’s most southerly point. The 32-year-old is hoping to complete the 2,000-mile challenge in 100 days, wearing HUUB wetsuits and open water kit.