ENDURANCE swimmer Beth French has been training at Wellington Sports Centre in a bid to make history.

She will tackle the first leg of the Oceans 7 Challenge next month when she swims the 22-mile North Channel between Northern Ireland and Scotland.

Beth will then take on six more epic swims at locations around the world as she bids to become the first person to complete the Oceans 7 within 12 months.

The North Channel is widely considered to be the most difficult channel swim in the world. Beth said: “It’s the coldest of the channels and I’ll be swimming without a wetsuit for 12 to 15 hours in water at a temperature of about 14 degrees celsius, so hypothermia is going to be a risk.

“There’s also going to be lots of lion’s mane jellyfish, the largest known species of jellyfish. Plus the ‘delightful’ Irish Channel weather – wind, current and rain.”

Beth has done lots of cold water acclimatisation to prepare for the swims, swimming through the winter without a wetsuit in water as cold as five degrees. She has also been eating lots in order to put on weight and carry some glycogen stores.

Beth, a 38-year-old massage therapist from Milverton, said: “I have been working out at Wellington Sports Centre – I’ll go and do some strength work in the gym then swim out in the pool. It’s about pulling your body around, finding where the weaknesses are and strengthening those up.”

The mental approach to the swims is vital and she uses an intensive form of meditation she learnt when she was ordained as a Buddhist monk in Thailand in her 20s.

“When you start a swim it’s 40% mind, 60% body,” Beth said. “After about 12 hours that switches to about 60% mind, 40% body – and once you are getting towards the end of a swim it’s about 80% mind, 20% body.

“You have to have a very strong mind to cope. You do get tired, you do end up hurting – these things come and go. You keep thinking ‘I’m not there yet, I’m not there yet and keep going.”

Swimming was a passion for Beth from a very early age, even though she grew up on an isolated farm where it was not easy to get to a pool or the sea. “I was the kind of kid who would jump in a bucket if it had water in it,” she said. “I was just always drawn to water. All photos of me pre-five, I’m in water.

“I remember when I was eight, I heard about a woman swimming to France – she wasn’t the first woman to swim to France but she was the first I had heard of and it just lit something in me that it was possible to swim somewhere else.

“It just became this little obsession in my head. Anytime I could get in water I did get in water – and the longer I was in water the better I felt.”

Beth was struck with glandular fever at the age of ten and her adolescence was marred by periods of immune dysfunction and exhaustion. It was not until she was 17 and wheelchair bound that ME was given as a diagnosis.

Beth has a crowdfunding site to pay for her support crew www.crowdfunder.co.uk/

oceans7. Funds raised will also help Action for ME.