Project Big Romantic Gesture

I blipped about Paris and the padlocks on Pont D'Artes a while ago. Heather had told one of her friends who lives in New Zealand with his Scottish fiancée. They hatched a plan; he would send her a padlock to put on the sticks at the loch and send back a photo. So project big romantic gesture got underway at 6am. The sun was shining, the air was still and the temperature was resolutely in single digits.

Heather brought the padlock with their pet names written on the front in indelible ink. Despite me insisting I wasn't taking the risk, I ended up swimming out to the sticks carrying it. I had to do breaststroke with my fist tightly shut as I worried that if I tried front crawl I would open my hand and lose it. We got the sticks, Heather spied, in her words, big rusty nuts to attach the padlock to. They were too wide. Then we spotted a very rusted one at the top of one of the sticks, fortunately close to the barge being used for the excavation works going on. So Cammie manfully climbed up, we handed him the padlock to attach (which you can just see at his right hand) then handed up the camera for him to take a few shots. He did a good job despite cold fingers. Fantastic!!! We have different angles, the sun glinting off the metal and shots with the Maid of the Loch in the Background and ones with the three other swimmers in the water. And this is Cammie, like some kind of aquatic Milk Tray delivery man about to get back in.

Job done, the four of us swam off to Cameron House and back enjoying the calm and the sun's rays shining through the water. Just to make it perfect, the roadworks on the Erskine Bridge have been cleared so it was Costa for a toasted teacake before work.