LONDON – A man clad in an old-fashioned, lead-booted diving suit clambered out of Scotland‘s famed Loch Ness for the final time on Thursday at the end of an epic underwater trek to raise money for a leukaemia charity. Lloyd Scott, who last year took five days to complete the London marathon above ground in the same diving suit and has worn the outfit in marathons in New York and Edinburgh, took 12 days to complete his 42 km sub-aquatic ramble along a stretch of the loch.

He told Sky News: „I have had to battle against pressure, the resistance of the water and poor visibility. It is very cold, it is very lonely, I don‘t know what is underfoot and my airline gets tangled. There are all number of problems that actually make it far more difficult than doing it on land,“ he added.

Scott, 41, a former fireman and footballer who has already raised millions of pounds for charity, only had one serious scare during his lonely trip along a ledge some 10 metres below the surface of the immensely deep loch. „I was crawling in some silt with nil visibility and just sort of tumbled off the ledge,“ he said. „I was caught by my safety line and my airline, totally disorientated.“

Undeterred, the former leukaemia sufferer carried on and finally ended his trek on Thursday morning.

So had he caught sight of the loch‘s famously elusive resident, the Loch Ness Monster? „I have only seen two fish up to now, which either means there are not many fish in the loch – or something has eaten them all,“ he said.

Reuters