Hi,
Taking the kids swimming at Bala on Sunday.
We’ve never been before. Which area should we aim for? Planning on spending the day there.
Any tips to make it a good day are appreciated 🙂
Local tourist info or sailing club will have the best info.
Bala is chuffing COLD!
Its not like any “normal” inland lake, it’s full of mountain winter rain water and chilled by granite, so it’s cold... about 5-6C max.
Youll need some wetsuits if they are submerged in it at the least. There is one shallow end near the town where the car park is, head there. The rest of the lake has very steep sharp drop offs from the edges into deep water, cold water.
Lovely place, enjoy.
Interestingly Bala isn't on the list...
http://www.wildswimming.co.uk/wales/north-wales-and-snowdonia/?multi_city=north-wales-and-snowdonia
Very dangerous lake as above, very deep and suddenly, and also fed by various dams they release the water and you get huge surges of cold water, paddled the full length in a canoe years ago and the speed of the water was weird, on a flat lake.
Some very very odd statements above 5 degrees c. Really.
There is a slightly bleak industrial expensive car park at the bala end as noted by the poster above.
The best place we y'know is the huge campsite about 4 miles down the main road to Mac. It's also quite expensive but far more picturesque. We've swam with the kids loads there in perfect comfort even as late as October.
The damn release people are referring to is of course the tryweryn.