When summer eventually rolls around, and Magnums, BBQs and sunburn become daily occurrences, where is better to head to than the nearest stretch of water?

Luckily, in Anglesey, we don’t have far to go. We have a list of favourite beaches as long as our coastal path, and indeed, one of them, Porth Wen, just made The Sunday Times best beaches list.

Last weekend though, we were in London, for a (rather lovely) wedding. It was a scorcher, and with no beach in sight, we decided we would have to take a dip elsewhere to cool off before the nuptials.

A little research unearthed the ‘King’s Cross Pond Club.‘ Billed as a ‘natural bathing pond in the heart of London.’ It is the UK’s first ever man-made fresh water public bathing pond, rather amazingly slap bang in the middle of a working construction site area of King’s Cross. We booked tickets and donned our caps.

The changing rooms were retro, the sun was shining, and the pool was beautiful. Curving through a clearing, surrounded by huge buildings, and scattered with delicate wildflowers, it was surreal and lovely. At 40m long it is a good size for swimming, and thanks to being purifed through a natural closed-loop process, using wetland and submerged water plants to filter, it is entirely chemical-free.

Further reading uncovered that the pool is the work of Ooze Architects and artist Marjetica Potr, but perhaps more interestingly for us, Hoare Lee worked on the project, a firm of consulting engineers who also advised on our new building. Who would have thought it?

All in all, a lovely weekend. Special thanks to Anna and Sam for a really wonderful wedding. (We saw some cute wedding favours pop up too…)