Wild swimming: ‘The sight of fresh water makes me thirsty to get in’

One cold-water enthusiast describes the thrill and exhilaration of an outdoors dip in Snowdonia

“The beauty of Snowdonia’s rainy climate is that all the dips and clefts in the saturated green overflow with pure water. It glistens, wind-whipped, in mountain cwms [hollows], rushes over into waterfalls and sits silently on huge valley floors.

“You can find electric blue (reflecting a hot, clear sky), green (lots of plant life), black (deep), brown (storm-stirred), matt white (icy) or a shivering upside-down landscape (windless) — water amplifies whatever is around it. That’s partly why I go; as Nan Shepherd, the Scottish poet and intrepid Cairngorms hill walker, said, “To aim for the highest point is not the only way to climb a mountain.”

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