This month our columnist MARTIN DOREY is thinking about some heavenly swims in the tipping rain…
Earlier this year I left Cornwall and schlepped to Scotland to work on updates for one of my books. As part of this trip I made it my business to swim in Scotland’s three heated outdoor pools; at New Cumnock, Stonehaven and Gourock. On the way I took another detour into the Peak District to swim at Hathersage’s delightful lido. Going to Hathersage was a proper English day out. The pool feels timeless, like it has been there forever (it was built in the 1930s). Its bandstand adds an air of genteel expectation, as if the brass section could count time for me as I swam.
By contrast, the pool at New Cumnock, a small town in Dumfries and Galloway, is altogether newer and with an overexcited feel about it. It re-opened in 2017 after a revamp and is well loved.
We turned up for a very busy session with little hope of swimming lengths. The water temperature and coloured changing room doors made it a jolly potter-in-the-drizzle kind of a session.
In Stonehaven we swam lengths of the 50m pool accompanied by three other swimmers and six lifeguards. I have never felt safer and loved swimming in the warm, silky salt water while the rain soaked everything else – lifeguards included. The lengths just slipped by.
The final dip, at Gourock near Glasgow, beat them all. The heated saltwater pool is 33m long and enjoys amazing views over the Firth of Clyde and the Trossachs beyond. Swimming in it, on a windy day with intermittent showers, was glorious.
So why tell you all this? Well, as this magazi
