Cooling off in the Dee

The temperature has reached a top of 26C today. I think this is the hottest temperature I’ve ever felt in Aberdeen. We had no choice but to cool off in the river.

We cycled up Deeside Way a short way and walked down to the River Dee near Allan Park. There are some nice swimming spots here. It’s only about 15minutes by bike from our house and still in Aberdeen but you’ll see from the photos that it looks like the countryside.

Aberdeen is a wonderful city to live in. How many other places can boast of having a marvellous wild swimming spot like this in their city? And clean too!

On the north bank of the river, which is where we entered the water, it’s very shallow with a long and gentle gradient into deeper waters making it perfect for swimming. The current wasn’t too strong either. This dog swam out to me to say hello.

Elizabeth in particular really loved it. I finally got us all some swimming shoes which made walking on the pebbles much easier. We also got a snorkel which was fun. The water is already clear but it’s nice to submerge your head and have visibility. There are fish in the river. We don’t know exactly what type but they were about the size of our hands and grey in colour. Salmon are the dominant fish in the River Dee so it’s most likely this is what we saw but there’s also trout, pike, and perch.

Not far from this spot are some rapids that other people were flinging themselves down. Next time we plan to take an inflatable of some sort and test out the rapids. They looked fun.