How I became a nettle eating champion

We all know how it feels to be stung by a nettle, but can you imagine eating them?

Beth Hodges, 38, from Barry Island ate 19.5m (64ft) of them at the 2024 World Nettle Eating Championships – making her the reigning women’s champion two years in a row.

More than 30 people, from as far afield as the US and the Netherlands took part in the competition at the Dorset Nectar Cider Farm in Waytown, near Bridport on 22 June.

Ms Hodges said: “The funny thing is I’ve never won anything – this is the only thing.”

Participants had 30 minutes to eat as many leaves as possible before the empty stalks were counted.

They are given cider to help wash down the nettles and relieve the pain.

Ms Hodges said her entry into the competition last year was not planned and had been an impromptu decision – however, this year she had to give back the trophy so thought “why not?”.

Before last year, she had never eaten nettles.

“I remember trying one just saying ‘oh my god I’m so out of my depth’,” she said.

Yet the next day she ate 18.3m (60ft) of nettles and won the women’s cup.

On 22 June this year, she took on former world champions and won again.

“You’re given two foot of nettle stems, a pile of them,” she said. “You can either pick off the leaves individually or strip the stem – then you get the seeds and everything.

“I was kind of squishing them so I rolled it and squished it into a bit of a burger patty.

“They get really dry, they’re quite fibrous, it gets really hard to really hard swallow.

“That’s what slows you down because it’s fine getting it off the stem, it’s the chewing which takes forever.

“It tastes a bit like matcha green tea,” she told BBC Wales Breakfast on Tuesday.

Ms Hodges said : “They give you cider as well, so I was dipping it but this year I had a lot of water.”

Despite eating so many nettles leaves, Ms Hodges said it was not her mouth that hurt.

“Your hands are just on fire, which obviously they would be because you’ve just grabbed a bunch of stinging nettles – even now I’ve got little bits in my fingers.”

She does not have a game plan, she said – nor does she do anything after to ease the pain.

“I just ride it out,” she said.

So the question of everyone’s lips is, can she do it three years in a row?

She said she’s going to compete and will try to outdo her current record.

The tradition dates back to the 1980s and was held at the Bottle Inn at Marshwood, which has since closed.

The championship began when two farmers had an argument in a pub discussing who had the longest stinging nettles in their field.

The longest-nettle competition eventually turned into the World Nettle Eating Championships when one of the farmers, Alex Williams, promised to eat any nettle which was longer than his.