I hope you enjoy reading about my adventures
Success in the North Channel
At 2.30am on Thursday 25th August 2016 I woke up in my hotel room in Donagadhee, Northern Ireland. I had managed to get a few hours of broken sleep but the knowledge that today would be the day of my most challenging swim to date was stopping me from getting any...
swimming between Ireland and Scotland to mark the Ten Year Anniversary of my English Channel Swim
On 22nd August 2006 I swam solo across the English Channel in 14 hours aged 19. Today marks the ten year anniversary of the swim that changed my life in every single way. What makes this week even more special to me though is that in a few days time I will be...
How to Cope with Not completing a swim and what it takes to go back
You have trained for years, sacrificed a social life, family time and endured pure exhaustion in your journey to complete your open water swim but then it all falls apart at the final hurdle. This is never what we as open water swimmers want to happen but in our...
Time to Return to the North Channel
Two months ago on 2nd September I was 18 miles into my North Channel swim between Ireland and Scotland when an abnormal amount of jellyfish forced me to stop. I was suffering a very serious reaction to hundreds of stings and was starting to lose control...
The Irish Channel Attempt 2014
The alarm went off at 3.30am although I had barely slept a wink that night due to the nerves of what was about to come. 18 months of hard training 6 days a week had finally come to fruition as I was about to prepare for the hardest swim of my life, the North Channel....
Bad weather aborts first swim
I have just arrived back in England after a torturous 10 days in Ireland waiting to swim to Scotland. The swim never got to take place as the weather was terrible every single day. By terrible I mean 12 ft waves and 30mph winds every day which not even...
The Countdown to the North Channel
It is now just 2 weeks before my swim window opens on August 18th and I am getting a little nervous to say the least. As the weather is so unpredictable for any channel swim, a swimmer always books a 5 or 6 day window of opportunity in relation to the tides so that...
The Dangers of Overtraining
My North Channel Swim is getting increasingly closer and I am starting to get a little bit stressed out about it! Have I trained hard enough? Probably not. Have I partied too much? Probably so. I am however confident that I have done enough to get me...
From Fit to Fat to Fit again!
With six months to go until my North Channel Swim between Ireland and Scotland I am starting to up the training level and intensity considerably! Unlike many other extreme long distance swimmers I prefer not to waste my days plodding up and down the pool at a steady...
English Channel done – What next?
My name is Ed Williams. I am a swimming teacher based in Cambridge but also class myself as an extreme marathon swimmer. On August 14th 2006 I completed my lifelong dream aged 19 to swim solo across the English Channel. This 22 mile swim considered by many as the...
