AN EPIC swim across 60 kilometres of some of the wildest water in Wales’s seas, rivers, lakes and reservoirs is no easy task - as TV presenter Gaz Top discovered.

Gareth Jones: Nofio Adre (Gareth Jones: Swimming Home) – tells the tale of how star of ITV shows like How 2 with Fred Dinenage and Carol Vorderman and The Big Bang tackled two-metre waves in the Bristol Channel and so much more.

To get the energy to fuel his efforts Gareth, who was born in St Asaph, was advised by nutrition experts from Bangor University to gorge up to 5,000 calories a day.

His eating regime consisted of a massive breakfast bowl of muesli kicking off a daily intake of carbohydrates and protein that was rounded off by a starter, two main courses and a pud in the hotel each evening.

The former pupil of Ysgol Glan Clwyd in St Asaph who now lives in Stoke Newington in London, dreamt up the project to celebrate his 60th birthday and it has been brought to life by award-winning Caernarfon-based international TV company Cwmni Da.

He body-surfed ashore in Porthcawl, suffered severe stomach cramps which nearly derailed the project near Llanelli, shared Llyn Tegid with a fish from the Ice Age and was swept down the River Conwy.

The three-part series has been produced by Cwmni Da and will be shown on S4C, with the first programme going out at 9pm on Friday, October 29.

Gareth - whose the nickname Gaz Top came from his early days as a roadie with Welsh rockers The Alarm – had always been a strong swimmer and when he started taking his new-born son swimming in London 20 years ago, he was soon up to 100 lengths a session himself.

He said: “Basically I’m a frog from the waist down. I’ve got flat feet so I can’t run but I can swim and this idea of doing this to mark my 60th came about because I wanted to reconnect with Wales, the land that made me, after so long living in London.

“I put the idea to S4C and they were keen and I was lucky enough to have Cwmni Da as the production company and they’ve been absolutely brilliant in organising everything because you need safety boats and water safety experts as well as a team for the cameras and sound.

“They threw me into the sea about 700 metres from the beach at Porthcawl and I virtually surfed in on two-metre waves in about 20 minutes."

Programme One sees Gareth in such varied locations as Llanelli’s North Dock, the River Teifi, Gwent’s Llandegfedd Reservoir, Parc Bryn Bach, Tredegar.

The second in the series covers Mid Wales with the Elan Valley and Claerwen Reservoirs, the River Dovey, Llyn Mwyngil, at Tal y Llyn, and Llyn Tegid, Wales’s largest lake, at Bala.

The final leg pits Gareth against North Wales’s great lakes, from Snowdonia’s Trawsfynydd, Eigiau, the great glacial expanses of Padarn, Gwynant and Mymbyr tiny Llyffant, the highest lake in Wales at over 2,600 feet, Llyn Brenig, up on the Denbigh Moors, and the swift-flowing River Conwy.

Gareth said: "Llyn Tegid was unbelievable. It’s just over six kilometres long and famously cold and deep, deep enough and cold enough to be home to the gwyniad, a species of Arctic char.

“My father almost drowned when he was sailing on the lake years ago and I trained specially for it so it was emotional for me to be in the water there."

The series took three weeks to film and Cwmni Da producer Huw Erddyn said: “Gareth’s food poisoning on day three was a challenge but before that, in the Bristol Channel, he might have found the surf carrying him very helpful but it was a nightmare for us trying to film with the boat bucking around in the waves.

“Llyn Tegid was a long swim but the longest were on the Teifi and the Conwy, both at over eight kilometres, and we planned to finish at the Liverpool Arms on Conwy harbour.

“It’s a good place to stop for fish and chips and that’s exactly what we did.

“I know Gareth was worried about the swim in the Teifi, the last one for the first programme and over 8 kilometres just after recovering from the stomach bug.

“It was slack water and so he had to really swim for the first half which was tough but we had a good safety team throughout with Dilwyn Sanderson Jones as our lead safety, who does safety work for Bear Grylls. We had safety canoes, kayaks or a rib in the water at all times.

“We met some great people along the way too and we heard some wonderful stories about Wales.”