A lovely, solid collection of essays centered around swimming at "the pond". Only two of these were a bit of a dud for me, but even though were enjoyable enough. A great collection, and now I really want to swim at the pond myself. Lovely nature writing and writing about life and being a woman. 

 Who gets to say that their fave place on earth has an entire book dedicated to it? Well, i do now!

I'll always remember the first time a friend brought me to the pond: a sunny, warm July day, where I laid in the water and ran my finger through my seaweed-like hair floating around. I was smiling like I'd seen an angel, and my friend looked at me with a grin. I grinned back. Because we both knew something, then: that we were somewhere truly special.

This book captures the pond's magic very well. The sorority, the nature, how it shelters you from - yet connects you to - London. All the perspectives were great, and I loved most essays, though my favorite ones were the winter ones: they put words on what I've been trying to explain to my friends about wild swimming.

As someone who doesn't live in London, reading this gave me a little heartache because sometimes I truly believe I would never be unhappy if I could swim in the Ponds every day. But I'm always so grateful to think that this place remains, whether I'm there or not, that this little sanctuary always exists, and that there's now a book celebrating it. Ladies'Pond forever!!!!