Log House Holidays: cabins, wild swimming

Eight log cabins, one 100-acre spring-fed lake, and a swim that starts at your own beach. Log House Holidays sits at Poole Keynes near Cirencester, inside a private 130-acre nature reserve on the Gloucestershire side of the Cotswold Water Park. The swimming here is not a spot you drive to afterwards — the water is the site.

The stay

There are eight cabins, built by hand from solid Baltic pine and spread far enough apart that you rarely see another one. They sleep from four to eleven. Every cabin has a wood burner inside, a fire pit outside, a private beach and its own rowing boat, and each has the option of a traditional Finnish wooden hot tub on the veranda, heated to 39°C. Island Lodge has water on two sides. Elsa Lodge has its own island and pier. Mayo Landing, the largest, sits on a private island in the middle of the lake, reached by a bridge, with an optional heated pool and wood-fired sauna. Dogs are welcome. Arrival is from 3pm, 4pm at Mayo Landing; departure by 9am, 10am at Mayo Landing. Kemble station is ten minutes away by car.

Swimming on site

The lake is the reason to book, and the owners say so on their own activities page: “Our spring-fed clear water lake is great for swimming during summer months when you want to cool off or in colder months for the brave! Take a dip from your cabins private beach or jump in from your rowing boat.” Their summer page adds that the spring-fed water is “incredibly clean and ideal for wild swimming or just for dipping your toes in”. At Mayo Landing, the private jetty and rowing boat are described as the ideal spot for fishing or wild swimming.

In practice that means walking out of the cabin, down your own beach, and getting in. There is no lifeguard, no roped course and no session times — this is private water on a nature reserve, so the risk assessment is yours. The 19ft rowing boats come with lifejackets. A 2.5-mile track circles the lake if you want to walk the shoreline first and pick out the coves and islands you fancy swimming to.

Worth knowing

It is a fishing lake as well as a swimming one — pike, perch, tench, rudd and roach — and the owners flag high weed from May to October, which is worth knowing before you set off across open water. The reserve is a Site of Special Scientific Interest with a tern colony on one of the gravel islands, so give nesting birds room in spring and early summer. Kayaks and paddleboards can be requested. The site says it has been fully booked for the last ten years, so plan a long way ahead rather than hoping for a spare weekend.

Bookings and full details: loghouseholidays.co.uk.

Somerford Lake in the Cotswold Water Park, near Poole Keynes. Photo: Steve Daniels, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.