Andy Torbet’s top five inland winter snorkels

Photo credit: Andy Torbet

Andy Torbet makes the case for heading inland to keep up your snorkelling fix during the British winter.

Winter weather can often make the seas around the British coastline un-snorkellable. The winds and weather can soon stir up a storm, destroying visibility and creating wavy conditions that make snorkelling and water entries/exits plain dangerous. The question is, should the UK snorkeller pack up their tube until April? Perhaps not! 

I often find that winter can produce better visibility. The algal blooms that tend to occur in warmer months have long since diminished and I can dive in lochs in Scotland and llyns in Wales

Although wind-driven weather is seldom restricted to the coast, its effects tend to be more subdued as we move inland. The nature of the landscape naturally provides shelter from the wind; the smaller size of a lake allows less surface area on which the wind can act, making any waves much more manageable. I often find that winter can produce better visibility. The algal blooms that tend to occur in warmer months have long since diminished and I can dive in lochs in Scotland and llyns in Wales, with their feeder streams frozen and the waters still. The viz can be outstanding, though it’s not a precise science.

But before I delve into my Top Five, a few words of caution on temperature and safety. As cold as the sea around Britain can get in winter, it is surpassed in severity by our freshwater bodies. Their relatively smaller size means they are more rapidly affected by the lower air temperatures. Some lakes, ponds and pools will ice over in winter, but even those that remain dive-able can be only one or two degrees above freezing. So, we really do need to consider keeping ourselves warm before and after our snorkel, how long we spend in there and what thermal protection we wear while pottering about in the water. This might mean those sites which require a longer walk out in a wet wetsuit may have to be left for warmer times.

So, here are my favourites. These may not be the most impressive visually or the easiest to reach, but they are all fresh water pool and lakes I have visited in winter and are some of my most memorable. 

1. Red Tarn, Cumbria 

I’ve snorkelled this small lake in the Lake District a number of times since my first outing in 2009. I’ve done it once on a summer’s day and twice in a blizzard – and one of those was at midnight. Despite the topside conditions, the landscape is incredible, with the Helvellyn mountain range nearby. The scattered remains of an old Mosquito aircraft which crashed and sank in 1940 provide an interesting bonus for those that can find it.

2. Loch Coire an Lochan, Scotland 

Depending on one’s definition this is Britain’s highest lake and therefore its highest altitude snorkel. The Cairngorm scenery is impressive, and Loch Coire an Lochan nestles in the hills with its bright blue, shallow waters, located in a small coire below the UK’s third highest mountain.

3. Windermere, Lake District 

The visibility is rarely more than a few metres, but I have found the lake to be full of small life, relatively non-aggressive swans, easy access to the water and plenty of cafés and pubs to warm up in afterwards. 

4. High Force, Teesdale 

A waterfall pool rather than a lake or loch. The weather is almost irrelevant here as the cliff walls provide shelter from the wind and even huge rainfall only causes the falls to be more impressive and, as long as one keeps a sensible distance, no less safe. It is quite unique to meander around the lower parts of the pool, often spotting money people seeking wishes have tossed in, to look up and see High Force thundering away close by.

5. Loch Ness, Scotland 

It’s cold. Very cold. And the foreboding blackness of the water only adds to the foreboding nature of this place, where history has proven the imagination can run riot. Did I mention it’s cold? Nevertheless, to set out from Urquhart Castle into these peaty waters, with thoughts of monsters and myth swirling around your head is quite an experience. Once. I would definitively have it on your snorkel-tick-list, if you happen to be passing by. But I’m not sure I’ll ever venture out there again. After all…