Land’s End to John O’Groats: swimming the full length of Britain

In October 2022, Jasmine Harrison became the first woman to swim the entire length of the UK from Land’s End to John O’Groats. It was a challenge that only one other person had tackled before and, despite 900 miles of swimming, she still says the biggest challenge was the logistics. She tells her tale of challenge and adventure.

I have always been a swimmer, from completing my first length at age four to competing at county and regional level then going into open water, even winning some national competitions.

I grew up loving the sport and I’m also a swimming teacher at my local pool in Thirsk.

It’s another story but in 2020, aged 21, I set off to row solo across the Atlantic; 70 days later, and having never rowed before, I successfully made it. What next then? Well, how about something I know? Swimming!

Not really knowing much about the different challenges people have done around swimming apart from the obvious Channel crossing I thought of ones I’d like to attempt. Swimming between each Greek island sounded appealing to me. Hmm, maybe I should stick with something closer to home; a coast to coast perhaps?

Logistics are the biggest challenge of doing any big swim. I figured if I needed to do all that hard work then I may as well go for as big a distance as I could manage. I’d already thought about cycling Lands End to John O’ Groats, so why not swim it? Done. The Full Length of Britain swim was decided, now to raise some money.

Time to get planning

Fortunately, some sponsors from the row helped with that so it wasn’t as much of a challenge as it could have been. Getting hold of a boat and volunteer crew, including kayakers, was a problem. Most of those willing to give up their entire summer were already planning their own cool adventures.

In total I had 18 different people to help crew, ranging from one day to three months. This made organising difficult, especially when I was face down in the water for most of the day.

I set off swimming from Land’s End on 1 July 2022 with a 40-foot yacht, three crew and a kayak as my base.

The effort of just getting off the dock to my drop point every day was draining. It actually made it easier to get in the water each time. A six-hour swim in between bad weather systems seemed like nothing in comparison.

Being in the water was the relaxing part, because at least I was moving, stroke by stroke getting every metre closer to John O’Groats. Stroke by stroke also getting my body beaten up with my wetsuits cutting deeply into my back between my shoulder blades and arm pits. Not wanting to stop because the pain was worse if I did. Not wanting to waste any precious swimming time to take a drink simply because every minute of every tide counted. I did not want to get stuck in the north of Scotland in a storm and risk this challenge failing. Stopping for a drink or a snack took too long anyway by the time September arrived.

Pushing on

The cold affected me to the core, I just had to keep moving. There was too much to lose, I had come too far by that point to give up. I had come too far even at the start line to ever consider stopping. The motivation of losing what I’d worked so hard for and not wanting to let people down kept me going. Not even another jellyfish sting to the face was going to stop me for more than three seconds while I swore down into the water so my dolphin friends would hear and hopefully come up and join me like they did almost every other swim to raise my spirits. I was never going to let something in my control stop me from making progress.

Making a mask out of a neoprene hood worn backwards solved the stingy problem. As for the other
problem of being terrified of swimming in the dark, well, that was up to me.

I followed my kayaker so closely I gave myself another problem of continuous black eyes; face planting the kayak at least three good whacks per night definitely kept me awake but it sure didn’t scare away the whales that liked to swim under me and scare me to death.

Safety on the kayak

Focus. Get over it Jasmine, it might not be an orca; the chances are only about 50/50… I was aware I looked very much like a seal so, passing the Isle of Man, when a vertical fin came out of the water, with the tail fin also vertical, I was out, straight onto my support boat. I had thought the only dangers to me were the traffic and ferries that moved around me, certainly not sharks!

Many things are out of our control, one of the biggest being the weather. Big waves don’t affect my swimming ability greatly (I love swimming in huge waves), but my crew couldn’t keep me safe. Swimming in more than a two-metre swell was very difficult as the wind took the boat, but not me, forwards. Often even my kayaker couldn’t get in in those conditions without capsizing.

My tow float couldn’t be seen in the trough of a wave; therefore, I couldn’t be seen, and could get lost. Being left alone with the mast of the boat disappearing and no land in sight was a very daunting feeling and we learned quickly.

Braving the Corryvreckan

By the time I had swum through the Corryvreckan whirlpools (accidentally), swam for six hours against the tide making two miles progress, was held up in marinas waiting for storms to pass, had
crew leave, kit break and with my mind completely bursting due to the skipper’s lack of communication, I thought that swimming around Cape Wrath would be a nice home straight. How wrong I was!

NATO happened to be having the biggest firing practice of the past decade right as I got around the corner. Even though I wasn’t really meant to, I swam with gun fire overhead, hearing and seeing the explosions on the cliff face. It made for much faster swimming, until my drop point was too far away from safe harbour, the haven from the next storm.

Final stretch

After Cape Wrath huge waves and too much distance to sail back to the drop point within a tide meant only one option: to swim the last 80 miles.

‘We’re gonna need a bigger boat’! After many hours of searching, asking and planning, one of my crew members travelled to Aberdeen to pick up a RIB with a much more powerful engine than the yacht.

Kelpie, my new saviour, got me to the end, even though she broke down multiple times and was rescued
by a fishing boat at the finish line at John O’Groats harbour on 18 October 2022! The end of the most logistically challenging but amazing thing I have ever done.

Highlights, on my rest time between tides, of chilling on deck in my hammock as dolphins rose around me during the summer heat wave helped make the full 110 days effort worth it. Now permanently physically scarred, mentally stronger, with some great friendships formed and the support boat delivered back home I can finally look at my track and know it’s done.

The reason for doing a challenge for me is so that anything else in life that comes up seems much simpler. Now, after the row and this swim, I can assure you it does.

Watch our conversation with Jasmine, filmed as part or our Patron virtual event.

This article is from the February issue of Outdoor Swimmer. Click here to subscribe to the magazine.