British explorer Ed Stafford has been conferred with the title of the European Adventurer of the Year for walking the entire length of River Amazon.

Thirty-five-year-old Ed Stafford, a former British Army officer, took 859 days to cover the entire distance from the source of the river in Peru to its mouth in Brazil.

During the adventure, Stafford encountered electric eels, dangerous piranhas, snakes and other poisonous creatures. Tribesmen armed with shotguns and bows & arrows chased him. He also faced wrong accusations of murder.

Overcoming all these hurdles, he reached mouth of River Amazon in Brazil in August 2010.

Stafford, from Mowsley, was given the award at an event, called the Wilderness Fair, in Stockholm.

While giving the award, the jury said, “His expedition ranged more than 6,700 kilometres from the Peruvian Andes across Colombia and into Brazil and gave an insight into the lives of the locals in an endangered rainforest."

The Adventurer of the Year was initiated in 2005 in Sweden. The European Adventurer of the Year award was added to the awards previous year and was first given to Italian climber Simone Moro.