Wild swimming

You know when you are looking for something and you can’t find it. Then you find it where you thought it was in the first place – it was ‘under your nose’ all the time. Well, that sort of happened to us this week. Our daughter who is still on furlough, bought herself a bike. She went off exploring in the village of Furnace and found a lovely bike ride/walk- just ‘under our noses’.

So when we had a beautiful hot day this week, we decided to take the dogs and walk through the village, passed the salmon hatchery, through the road that stretches by the quarry, along about a mile and half of dirt track that contours Loch Fyne to a small cove. There are a couple of houses that overlook the loch by a stream that rushes with rainfall from Dun Leacainn that shadows the inlet. The stony beach was exposed as the tide was out but you would struggle to find a more quintessentially Scottish scene.

Mabel and Boo went daft with excitement and were in the water within a moment. Mabel was especially exuberant, she was a regular dipper at the beaches in East Lothian before we moved from Edinburgh. We spent sometime beachcombing and strolled back to Powdermills via the village shop and an ice cream.

The quarry walk will now be a regular suggestion of local walks for our guests. In addition, it is now to become a prime spot that Sue and Izzy are going to use for their ‘wild swimming’. On Christmas Day last year, they decided to enter the freezing loch to start their wild swimming regime, much to the hilarity of the rest of the family. ‘Wild swimming’ is meant to therapeutic and exhilarating. Unfortunately the lockdown has hindered progress but the wetsuits are at the ready. There is simply no excuse now that we have found the beautiful, shallow cove ‘under our noses’.