I’ll send our herons over your way!
No if we did something it would be more ‘swimming hole’ size, just a more natural, less energy hogging / environmentally damaging option than a swimming pool. Here a some probably not DIY versions!
Just to look at, @Toryroo - this is Normandie you know - the frozen north 
Edit: However, your examples look lovely!
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I tick those boxes with a conventional looking pool. The difference is a garanteed safe swimming pool.
As I have said before, the clever integration and planting makes ponds look more settled into the garden surrounding. Not everyone’s taste though and the wet area usually needs to be the same size as the swimming area.
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How about installation costs though John? The thing with this is that we could do it ourselves at a fraction of the cost of a ‘normal’ pool and money is tight to say the least! To the point where actually cna’t even afford a DIY natural pool at the moment!!!
Due to the increased size of a natural swimming pond due to the regeneration zone excavation costs and spoil removal would probably cost more than a pool.
There are some good kits available and 1 of the 1st ones I built is still going 19 years later. A pond would still require a liner and other asociated parts. You may need some concrete difficult to say but costs would be pretty similar.
Forgot to say that kit was €1700
If you buy a solar powered pump fountain recommend you get one with integral storage battery otherwise it will only work when sun actually shines. ( I initially made that mistake !) Start from about €80,
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did you work out how to upload photos John?
Thanks John - very useful tip that
John, any recommendations?
John, I’d be interested in a link to the sort of thing you are talking about 
Apologies Tory, just looking at the Zyke online catalog and it seems the kit is not being advertised currently. It was a Laguna kit by Zodiac italy.
Prices on other kits has moved up a bit as well.
Oh that is sad!!! Thanks for looking for me anyway!
Found this, very similar.
This is a smaller more expensive version of the same kit
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@toryroo I hope you get something sorted as soon as possible, after a long separation from it, even in the hot weather last year, I have this year gone back to swimming in the pond on a regular basis. I think it was the prospect of constant dredging without much effect that discouraged me.
But now I am in there morning and evening, doing more and more lengths each time and really feeling the benefit health wise. Even floating/swimming on my back is a real joy, drifting slowly and looking up through the trees to the dappled sunlight. After each session I do a bit of dredging, mainly dead leaves, pine needles and the occasional waterlogged branch, and am making headway. I concentrate on the 2 ends, the only places I occasionally put my feet to the bottom, and they are pretty clear now.
Go for it, if you can. 
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Tracked down a file marked ‘changes’ on an old external drive, and here’s what I found. A brief photographic account of the construction of my swimming pond in 2005. If you think I look a bit shocked in the last picture, I should tell you that it was completed, and immediately inaugurated…in November. 
that is so cool ( ). I’d lov eto be able to hire a digger but we are on solid lilmestone so will probably need explosives! We had some friends who hand dug a small pool into the rock, not sure if they sealed it but it was really lovely!
Always wanted to use Dexpan to break rock but not actually having the need.
Cool is exactly the word, I’ve been in there 3 times today in this heat, lovely. And now, after finding a long lost face mask (just eyes and nose covered) I can see where I am going and don’t keep ending up in the wrong place. 
The bottom edge of it has been nibbled by rodents so it doesn’t make a proper seal there. But that doesn’t matter because it seals at the top and so the air in it stops the water rising, just like an open bottomed diving bell.
Also because I am more accurate now I can take a brief breath at each end to do a quick turn around.
Talking of digging. That mini-pelle was mine, I bought it from Sussex and it was delivered in a light trailer behind a Tranny van. Don’t worry about the rock, just look at the rocks in my pictures, some of them are huge, the secret is to tap away with the bucket till you find a small crack, then concentrate on that. I calculated one (which I transported on the bucket to make a bridge over the waterfall between the other 2 ponds) to be half a tonne. Have a look at the top left hand corner of the first 3 pics. There is an outcrop of rock there which I could not split, so it remains, if I stand on it now I am waist deep.
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