Wild swimming in River Hodder

 

 So my friend and I set off on a girls day out with the intention of wild swimming, well Shelli would be wild swimming I would be wild wading as I can't swim, this hopefully will be rectified over the next couple of weeks with river lessons, I'm pretty nervous about it but feel at 37 you should be able to swim and need to push through the nerves and learn something new. We droved for about an hour and found this wonderful place. The River Hodder is a river in Lancashire, England. The river is a County Biological Heritage Site. It rises on White Hill and flows for approximately 23 miles. We stopped under Cromwell's bridge, the water was clear and upon entering rather cold ( hence the shocked face second pic below)

 Once in though it warmed up and was such a lovely experience to be in the water, there were blue/green dragonflies hovering around, a heron stopped further up stream, fish were swimming around us, I was a bit worried about one going up my particulars!

 The water wasn't very deep but in a way we was glad as this was our first time in the river and it broke us in gently, it was such a brilliant feeling being so free and having a different perspective on the view. Our skin felt lovely afterwards with all the minerals in the water.

 We stayed in for quite a while then got out and dried off, we then led in the sunshine feeling so relaxed and listing to the sound of the tricking water and sheep now and then bleating in the field, after a while we went for a walk at the other side of the river to discover a deep area, it looks so inviting, can't wait to go back next week. In parts the scenery looked like France, with fields full of sweetcorn, high trees and a chateau type house, the area is so beautiful and green, I do love being in nature, Tolkien who wrote the lord of the rings was inspired by this part of UK, I can understand why, its magical.

We went for a drive and found ourselves at Longridge fell, what an amazing view, 2 old ladies stopped to talk to us and we asked if they could take our photo (hence the finger covering up part of the lens)

It was such a wonderful experience and I would recommend it to anyone, just don't go in canals, reservoirs or urban rivers. There has been much ado about drowning in UK but I think if you look at the statistics, its mainly young men, who probably have been showing off jumping in no doubt. As long as you are sensible, I see no harm in it.