On August 14th 2009 Ed swam the length of Lake Windermere raising over £2700 for East Anglia’s Children’s Hospice. He was accompanied by a Channel swim student and good friend, Duncan Boltt, without whom the whole ordeal would have been vastly harder work.

“Lake Windermere is 67m deep which is deeper than the Channel is, making it very cold. Technically the length is 10.5 miles but our course (due to obstacles, islands, and bad weather) made it 12 miles. We set off at 10.44am from Ambleside and the first two hours were easy, but after that short period of time I felt the familiar dull aches starting to show in my neck and shoulders.

The weather forecast that morning pointed out that you should be anywhere else than Cumbria for that day and that was certainly true because soon the rain was so hard it was hurting my arms above the water. The waves were choppier than in the channel and we were battling them for most of the swim. At one point the front of the boat was being lifted clean out of the water and visibility was so poor you couldn’t see 50ft in front of you. Bad weather and utter exhaustion is very demoralising and after 5 hours the boat crew had to lie to me about how long was left as they could sense my frustration in the water.

I was definitely hypothermic, shivering uncontrollably, seeing double and slurring my words. Duncan was not hypothermic thanks to his wet suit, and he helped me to stretch off my muscles before they cramped up. We walked into the hotel lobby and collapsed into a sofa whilst being serenaded by their resident pianist. A fitting end to an amazing journey.

Swimming for over 8 hours non stop certainly takes it’s toll on the body. I had designed our nutrition program personally and that was a big factor to our success as if the nutrition is not right then the body will struggle to cope.

Swimming across Windermere felt harder to me than swimming across the Channel, mainly because I had not trained nearly enough. People often comment that these swims must be easy for me, but like anything, the less you prepare, the harder the actual journey is and that was certainly true in this scenario. When you reach those unimaginable pain barriers, it is so important to remember why you are doing it, think of the rewards and the achievement and carry on. I am so glad that I persevered. I swam across England’s largest natural lake in 8 hours 11 minutes and raised a lot of money for a very worthy cause (East Anglia’s Children’s Hospice) in the process.”