Not Quite a UK county. Lake Ainsworth, Lennox Heads, New South Wales, Australia - The August Swim

In August, we were lucky enough to be invited to a family wedding over in Australia. OK, so the rules of the challenge were that it was meant to be a different county in the UK each month, but the opportunity to do the swim in another COUNTRY was too hard to resist.

I thought finding a spot over in Oz would be a doddle. Not so. Sea swims were out wherever we went as the sea was so rough. Good for surfing, not swimming. And, if the red and yellow flags are not up, then swimming is pretty risky, especially if you don't know the area. Towards the end of the trip, I was getting worried I would not find a decent spot that either a) was not going to cause me to drown or b) would not contain creatures that were likely to kill me. Then we landed in Lennox Heads. We had heard about Lake Ainsworth, a lake stained brown by the tea trees surrounding it. And when we arrived it was idyllic. The day of the swim was a beautiful, warm, blue sky day. Of course, the beach was deserted, as despite feeling like an English summer day to us, the Ozzies were in the midst of winter.

I loved this swim, the water was so clear despite its brown colour. It was like swimming in really cold tea, quite a strange yet lovely experience.