As the seasons turn and the sun starts to shine, let Kellan Macinnes, author of The Wild Swimmer of Kintail, inspire your next summer adventure in the Highlands.

The Wild Swimmer of Kintail
By Kellan MacInnes
Published by Rymour Books

Can you tell us a little bit about The Wild Swimmer of Kintail?

The Wild Swimmer of Kintail tells the story of how following the end of a twenty year relationship, flat broke and with a house full of Airbnb guests driving me crazy, I set out to follow in the footsteps of the little known poet, mountaineer, travel writer and pioneer of wild swimming Brenda G Macrow.

Macrow quit London for the Scottish Highlands in the summer of 1946 and spent six months in Kintail, a remote and mountainous area in the north-west Highlands of Scotland. While she was there, Macrow took on the challenge of wild swimming the 28 hill lochs (all located above a thousand feet) that lie within the boundaries of the Parish of Kintail. Seventy years later, accompanied only by a cantankerous and flatulent Labradoodle and hoping to find my ‘single self’ again on the way, I too set off in search of the hill lochs of Kintail.

The book is multi-faceted and there are many different layers to the story: as I tackle the challenge of wild swimming – or at least wild paddling – the hill lochs of Kintail, I recall scenes from the disintegration of my civil partnership. Some of the memories are funny, some poignant, some shocking. Meanwhile a parallel narrative about the summer Macrow spent in Scotland in 1946 is told in flashbacks from Kintail Scrapbook, the book Macrow wrote about her time in the north-west Highlands.

Last but by no means least, The Wild Swimmer of Kintail also contains practical information (routes, grid references and directions) for those wishing to take on the challenge of wild swimming the 28 high-altitude hill lochs of Kintail.

Far more than a mere travelogue, much more than simply nature writing, The Wild Swimmer of Kintail tells the story of the end of a gay relationship as well as being a deeply perceptive account of what it is like being a writer. Laugh-out-loud in some places, painfully honest in others, The Wild Swimmer of Kintail is a life-affirming tale about the healing power of wild swimming.

The Wild Swimmer of Kintail was a long time in the writing. Can you tell us a little about the process, the sources and the people you consulted?

I first began work on The Wild Swimmer of Kintail not long after my first book, Caleb’s List, Climbing the Scottish Mountains Visible from Arthur’s Seat, came out. I had just been awarded a grant by Creative Scotland to research and write another book and fulfil my ambition to become a writer. I was inspired to write The Wild Swimmer of Kintail when I was browsing in a second-hand bookshop in Edinburgh and came across a volume called Kintail Scrapbook by a writer I’d never heard of. The book had been published in 1948 and the writer’s name was Brenda G Macrow.

I was captivated by Macrow’s tale of escaping war torn London, taking the night train north and spending the summer of 1946 living in a cottage in Kintail with only her Skye terrier Jeannie for company. I loved Macrow’s descriptions of her wanderings through the Highlands just after the end of the Second World War. Throughout The Wild Swimmer of Kintail there are flashbacks to the summer of 1946 told in quotes from Macrow’s own writing.

For this I am indebted to Brenda Macrow’s daughter Lesley Hampshire for giving Rymour Books permission to use the extracts from her mother’s book in The Wild Swimmer of Kintail. I knew from my research that Macrow had a daughter but I had to do a bit of detective work to track her down. Using Google I found an obituary for Brenda G Macrow who had died in 2011 at the age of 94 at the Abbas Combe nursing home in Chichester.

I phoned the nursing home and explained I was researching a book. They gave me Lesley’s address and I wrote to her explaining all about my project. Lesley was a great help with the book, sending me photos, diaries and a scrapbook of newspaper clippings about her mum’s writing. A few weeks ago I was really pleased to get an email from Lesley which read: ‘I am now 75 pages into your brilliantly written book, I feel like I am walking both back in time with my mum, also with you now!’

Your writing demonstrates a deep love of the Scottish mountains. Can you tell us a bit more about how that came about and about how you got into wild swimming?

I was born and brought up in Edinburgh and spent many childhood holidays in Argyllshire and it was here that I was first introduced to hillwalking. Aged about seven I climbed 308m high Beinn Lora that rises above Ardmucknish Bay. I don’t remember much about it, but I do remember the bracken towered way over my head.

Moving forward a few years to the mid-1970s: back home in Edinburgh my primary school class was taken to meet the famous mountaineer Chris Bonington at the Lothian Outdoor Education Centre in MacDonald Road. I  remember the bearded man sitting behind a  school-type table, but what formed a lasting impression on my ten-year-old mind were the brown blotches on the skin of  his hands, the scars of frostbite sustained climbing the south-west face of Everest.

I was lucky to be a pupil at James Gillespie’s High in the early 1980s during the golden age of outdoor education. I went rock climbing and canoeing and spent two weeks climbing in the Austrian Alps with a group of fellow Edinburgh school pupils, (opportunities that are sadly only open to state school pupils with comfortably off parents today). Back home in Scotland with a school friend I climbed the Five Sisters of Kintail, Buchaille Etive Mor and Ben Nevis.

Re wild swimming, I’d always been up for a wee dip in the burn on a hot summer’s day on the way back down the mountain. But it wasn’t until I read Kintail Scrapbook by Brenda G Macrow, in which she describes visiting and swimming in the hill lochs of Kintail and decided to repeat this challenge for myself, that I realised it could be fun to jump in the water on cold days too.

Which books about Scotland and the great outdoors influenced you?

Many and various is the short answer: At the Loch of the Green Corrie by Andrew Greig, Hamish’s Mountain Walk by Hamish Brown, The First Fifty, Munro Bagging Without a Beard by Muriel Gray, The Key Above the Door by Maurice Walsh, Kidnapped by R L Stevenson, The Wild Places by Robert MacFarlane, Waterlog by Roger Deakin, The Outrun by Amy Liptrot, Under the Skin by Michel Faber and so many, many more.

The Wild Swimmer of Kintail is an unusual book in many ways, how easy was it to find a publisher for it?

Following the advice of a Literature Officer at Creative Scotland, I submitted The Wild Swimmer of Kintail to every literary agent in London whose website expressed an interest in narrative non-fiction and nature writing. A handful got back to me with feedback about my book. Typically, their emails began with positive comments. Something like: ‘The introduction had my hair standing on end’ but ended with: ‘it just didn’t quite add up to something that I thought would win over the publishers.’ The process took months and months (at least it helped pass the time during lockdown) but I really wouldn’t recommend it to other aspiring Scottish writers. I’m not sure they’re very keen on books about Scotland down there to be honest.

I then submitted the book directly to Scottish publishers, which is what I should have done in the first place. But they seemed to struggle with the unusual format of the book. I had a sense of deja vu as, just like with my first book, the bestselling Caleb’s List,  publishers rejected the manuscript saying things like: ‘It’s not about Brenda Macrow, or yourself or swimming, but a mixture of all three.’

But the mixture was the whole point, I thought to myself! That’s why I wrote it that way and that’s what made Caleb’s List a success! Luckily for me two independent Scottish publishers did express an interest in The Wild Swimmer of Kintail and Ian Spring at Rymour Books was brave enough to take the book on.

If you could choose one thing you hope readers take from The Wild Swimmer of Kintail, what would it be?

I’d really like it if some outdoorsy folk took on the challenge of wild swimming the hill lochs of Kintail. There are 28 of them and they’re all situated at a height of one thousand feet or more in a beautiful, remote area of Scotland. My dream is that one day ticking off the hill lochs on Macrow’s list will become as popular as doing the Munros is today!

One last question, can you sum up The Wild Swimmer of Kintail in ten words?

A life-affirming tale about the healing power of wild swimming.

The Wild Swimmer of Kintail by Kellan MacInnes is published by Rymour Books, price £15.75