Texts from friends help get swimmer across Channel

SPENDING 18 months training and thinking about the moment he would 'crawl onto land in France', English Channel swimmer Iain Lowe said it was even better in real life.

The 31-year-old successfully swam across the Channel in 14 hours 40 minutes on Friday, but it was by no means an easy feat.

'It was quite a bit rougher than what we first thought it would be. The current made it difficult to get to the point of the headland I was aiming for and I really had to punch my way through the sea towards the end and really sprint for it,' he said.

'But after swimming for 13 hours it is very difficult to sprint.

'You get to a point when you have never swam that far before for that amount of time and you don't know how your body is going to react.'