A FATHER and son who believe they have completed a world first by swimming across the English Channel for charity say the experience has brought them closer together.

James and Finn Salter, from Cote, near Bampton, completed the 30-mile challenge on Monday in 14 hours and 57 minutes, raising about £20,000 for the Charlie Waller Memorial Trust, which helps youngsters battling depression.

They hope to bag a place in the Guinness World Records book as they claim to be the first solo father and son to swim the Channel.

Film producer Mr Salter, 49, said: “There’s a bond between us that’s perhaps stronger as a result of it.”

Radley College student Finn, 17, said: “If you go through such an arduous training programme and the swim itself you get an experience that most other fathers and sons don’t have with each other.”

The pair trained for five months by swimming up to two hours a day at Windrush Leisure Centre in Witney and at Dover Harbour at weekends.

Mr Salter, who is married to interior designer Annabel, 49, and has another son, Harry, 13, has previously swum the Channel three times, completing it twice.

They chose the charity because it was relevant to Finn’s age group and because it was set up in memory of Charlie Waller, a former pupil at his school who committed suicide in 1997, aged 28, and because of a history of mental illness in the family.

They set off from Samphire Hoe in Dover at 9.50am on Monday and reached Cap Gris-Nez in France at 1am the following day, taking turns to swim two hours each. The shortest distance is 21 miles but they swam further after being pulled off course.

Two pairs of fathers and sons have previously completed the challenge in a relay but Mr Salter believes they are the first solo father and son relay team.

He is currently producing The Greatest Englishman, a film about Captain Matthew Webb, the first person to swim the Channel in 1875, starring Luther actor Warren Brown.

Finn, a former member of 4 Shires Swimming Club in Chipping Norton, said: “I wanted to do something which no one else has done before to grab attention for teenage depression.”

  • Two people from Oxfordshire have been included in this year’s edition of Guinness World Records.

Eoin Hartwright, of Didcot, became the first person to row across an ocean at the age of 16 when he travelled from the Canary Islands to Antigua in the Caribbean between December 2013 and February 2014.

Wallingford’s Sarah Dudgeon ran the fastest marathon in a wedding dress at the London Marathon on April 13, raising money for the British Heart Foundation and Action Medical Research.

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