Jasmine Harrison reflects on record-breaking 2022 UK swim

While her friends spent summer 2022 at music festivals and barbecues, 23-year-old Jasmine Harrison was in a wetsuit swimming 900 miles (1,448km) up the west coast of the UK. After an arduous 110 days she became the first woman to complete the challenge. BBC News' Tom Airey caught up with her to see how she had re-adjusted to life on land.

"Thinking back, my favourite memories from the swim are when it was flat and calm with the sun setting, dolphins rising up beside me," Jasmine recalls.

Those idyllic scenes were the exception rather than the rule on her epic journey, which saw her spending up to 12 hours in the sea each day in all manner of conditions.

Jasmine, from Thirsk in North Yorkshire, also remembers her front crawl through blooms of hundreds of jellyfish and being stung multiple times in the process.

She also suffered from "salt mouth", where skin is stripped from the tongue and throat, making it difficult and painful to swallow.

"Leaving the Isle of Man I was followed by a basking shark, it wasn't going to eat me but it was still very scary," she says.

The fish, which typically measures up to about 8m (26ft) as an adult, is not a threat to humans and lives on a diet of plankton which it eats by opening its huge mouth and filtering water through its gills.

"I wasn't aware of it at the time when I was in the water, but a support kayaker came over and said 'get on the boat' - they first thought it might have been a whale, but they saw its tail and it was vertical rather than horizontal."

From first entering water in western Cornwall on 1 July to reaching the top of Scotland on 18 October, her support boat, named Crews Control, became her home and its rotating 20-person volunteer crew, her family.

"The team have been just brilliant, every single one was initially a complete stranger," she says.

"While looking for a kayaker I just went on Instagram, typed in the relevant hashtags to see who was posting nearby and then asked them if they wanted to kayak for me."

Jasmine recently completed a two-and-a-half week journey sailing Crews Control back down the UK, following the same route she swam months earlier, to drop the boat on the south coast to be sold.

She says: "As soon as we docked into Dartmouth, the skipper looked at me and said, 'What now?'

"It was a massive relief but almost a bit of a depressing feeling, it's really strange."

After heading north to catch up with friends and family in North Yorkshire for Christmas, she's refining ideas for her next record-breaking endeavour.

In 2021 she became the youngest woman in the world to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean, so now has a yearly pattern of breaking records to keep up.

"I always want to have a target, whether it's a physical challenge or an idea for me to work towards, I just need something to aim for," the swimming teacher says.

"I want the next challenge to be international, maybe pick up a new skill, something different."

Her latest achievement led to her appearing on several podcasts and talking at the Kendal Mountain Festival, with the hope further work as a motivational speaker to inspire others may be on the cards.

Jasmine is hoping to be back to full fitness soon after the exhaustion of her swim, where she covered distances of up to 27 nautical miles (31 miles/50km) each day.

"A couple of weeks ago I did a swim gala just to see what my speed was like in the water, but I'd not fully recovered - I was so tired and hadn't slept," she says.

"When I get back home I'll go back in the pool and see what I can do, I'll see what my body's telling me."

As for Crews Control, who knows what the boat's next adventure will be?

"She's up for sale in January and we'll have to wait and see what her next story is," says Jasmine.

"Nothing as exciting as this one."

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