Loch an Eilein, Rothiemurchus

Loch an Eilein, a perfectly beautiful place worth not just the detour, but our very sojourn through life! And if you won't want to take my word for it, then know that it has been voted Britain's best picnic spot! We don't have long (I have a new towel-bearer, Mary, who is coming to Orkney with me), as we have a ferry to catch, but just enough time to swim thrice round the island which gives its name to the loch (eilein is Gaelic for 'island'), and where there is a 13th C. castle, occupied in the 1380s by the infamous Wolf of Badenoch, whose lair was on Lochindorb, but who is said to have used this fortification as a hunting lodge.

'Freedom', when in the farmyard (or as in my case, at the water-side), comes with a cluster of prepositions under its wing: freedom to swim, freedom from sundry external and internal constraints (cultural prohibitions, safety restrictions, personal hangups, ailments), and freedom of movement (with several 'to be free of/from X' variants). Then there are the compounds, such as carefree, where the concept is presumably so reified that it has shed its preposition (to be free of cares). Swimming, for me, is both a privileged expression of all those freedoms, and a grateful celebration of them.