Wild Swims in Scottish Winter — From Ballater to the Loch District

Up until 2020, I had a single, very specific condition that needed to be met before I would consider a wild swim: the air temperature must be above 18°C. 

That is all. 

Of course, in Scotland, we don’t often see those temperatures —  even in summer. But when it hits 18 degrees, I will declare it warm enough to swim — regardless of whether I do or not. But for the past 8 years or so, I try to not let a year go past without at least one wild swim. Sometimes I will plan a whole trip around a wild swim: I’m thinking back to roadtrips to Skye for exactly this motive. 

I’ve lived in Scotland most of my life, give or take a few years where I chased a wild dream to live in paradise. We pottered around Thailand and Malaysia for nearly a year before the cool oceanic climate (or was it the haggis) lured me back home again. Almost immediately I had known that the tropics weren’t for me — the first big paycheck I earned while living in Thailand, I blew on a 6 week winter trip to Scotland, Iceland and Norway. What can I say? This girl likes the snow. 

But when it comes to getting in the water, it had been strictly a summer pursuit. That is until I watched my friend and fellow blogger Melanie Chadd dip her toes into wild swimming and get hooked. In disbelief, I watched on as she swam year round — in a swimsuit. No wetsuits here. 

As a perpetual latecomer to all things trendy, I started to get keen on the idea of cold water swimming long after it became popular during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Outdoor Swimming Society even unpublished their maps of wild swimming locations in the UK due to crazy unsustainable visitor numbers during lockdown. 

Of course, I thought. Late to the party as usual. I added it to the long list of things that I became interested in long after the General Public got there first, creating surges in demand causing items to be out of stock, unavailable, or otherwise exorbitantly expensive: bread flour, home office desks, kettlebells, garden supplies, sewing machines, campervans. In other words: I’m a very basic bitch. 

Nonetheless. I was cold water swimming curious, and I was persistent. I got my hands on a secondhand wetsuit for a bargain price. The only issue was it didn’t fit — 6 months of lockdown meant that I was no longer the dress (or wetsuit) size I thought I was. 

But by that point, I decided I was sufficiently hardcore to go in the water in just my bikini.

My first swim was in Loch Tummel, 23rd October 2020. Temperature approximately 7 degrees. 

It was a beautiful autumn day. My pal Mel joined us, first for a walk at Killiecrankie to see the autumn colours, after which we scouted out a suitable spot for taking a dip. We ended up driving along the shore of Loch Tummel where there were plenty of suitable spots, but summer lockdown parking restrictions were in place making it difficult to stop. Eventually we were able to find a place, and, well, we stripped down and jumped in. 

Jump is not actually accurate though — let’s be honest. I always thought I’d be a ‘run in, run out screaming’ kind of cold water swimmer. I thought the shock of the cold water against my skin would leave me gasping at best, and screaming at my embarrassing worst. 

But Mel talked us through it. She told us to take it slow, giving ourselves time to acclimatise and to reduce the shock. She reminded me to breathe — great advice, given that I hadn’t even realised I was holding my breath. And she kept me calm, which I now think is the single most important thing when you’re entering pretty damn cold water. 

In total that day I think we were in for about 10 minutes — much, much longer than I thought I would manage for my first swim, and a swim in autumn at that. And I really loved it. Like, really loved it. It was the most invigorating sensation (second only to getting electrocuted on an electric fence by accident when I was a tween — and obviously I don’t recommend that). I was buzzing for days after. In the days leading up that first cold water swim, I had a sneaky feeling I would be hooked for life. That day sealed it. 

But the thing about cold water swimming is that once you are out of the water, you tend to continue to cool down, reaching what I call “peak coldness” 10 minutes after exiting. This is really difficult to remember when you’re just getting into the swing of things. 

It takes me a few minutes to get in in the first place. If you plunge in, I reckon the shock can overwhelm you. So I go in super slowly. I don’t move a great deal, but slowly, ever so slowly, I start to feel very comfortable, almost like I’m in a bath rather than a loch just a few degrees above freezing. And just when I’m feeling good is probably when I should get out. Because on the other side is the getting dressed and warming up. A couple of times now I have struggled to get dressed within that 10 minute time frame. And before I know it, my hands and fingers are too numb to navigate getting my socks and boots back on. I’m not sure I can stand upright, my teeth are chattering, and I’m gibbering. 

This is what I want to avoid, so I have to get out of the water before it’s too late. I need to get out while I can still operate and function as a human. The trick (my trick) is to prep before I go in the water. I lay out an old bath mat to stand on, and some hot elderberry cordial (homemade of course) to warm me up. And ideally I wolf down a piece of chocolate, if I can remember to bring some from the van stash. 

And then, fresh from the cold water, the invigoration washes over me like a wave. 

This is the perfect reset. 

This is making me the person I always wanted to be. 

Since that first swim in Loch Tummel in October, I swam fairly regularly in Loch Kinnord, Aberdeenshire. Afterwards, on the way home we often would grab coffee or a hot chocolate at the Courie Courie bakery — and just FYI, they do the best hot chocolate I’ve ever had. 

Ultimately we ended up moving to Perthshire in December 2020, and it felt like coming home. Now we live in what I lovingly call the Loch District. While I miss the Cairngorms a great deal, there is something about this region that I adore — this must be where my soul lives, or came from. 

Some heavy snow kept us home for a few weeks in January and February, and it was so cold for so long that the local lochs froze over for a decent length of time. The following melt and some heavy rain meant the lochs were then at their highest levels for over a decade. At one point, the loch we live beside had risen so much that the water was lapping our garden fence. 

But things are returning to normal gain, and now we are entering spring. The days are longer, brighter and warmer. The dawn chorus has begun. And a whole year of outdoor swimming lies ahead.