We Never Did Swim in Oggy

She asked. I said yes. The ranger had other ideas.

August 1979. Eight of us. One Mini. And a plan that went exactly as well as you'd expect.

It was the summer of 1979, a few months after my mum died. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go to college, and I definitely wasn’t sure I wanted to leave my dad on his own. I was spending more and more time at Chengsville—a rambling former Quaker house with a burial ground in the garden and a curious surplus of doors stacked in corners and leaning against walls.

I was hanging around with my friends, and at the nucleus was The Spasms—Tupton’s very own post-punk band. The people there didn’t ask much. Plans got made around the kitchen table—some impulsive, some ridiculous, a few that stuck.

This is the story of one of them.
A Mini. A moonless night.
And the closest I ever came to swimming in Ogston Reservoir
(now, capsizing... that would be another story).

We Never Did Swim in Oggy

By late summer, Chengsville had become the kind of home I didn’t know I’d been looking for—a place where misfits made plans faster than they asked questions. We were gathered around the kitchen table, weathered and wide, orbiting whatever came next.

It was August—the kind that forgets it’s supposed to feel like summer, and smells more like wet grass and change. I was heading off to college in a few weeks, and the air had that charged stillness, like something about to break.

That’s when Jules looked over at me with that dangerous little smile—the one that always meant trouble—and said,
“Rob, what about Ogston? We could go for a swim.”

She didn’t say skinny-dip. She didn’t need to.
And of course, I said yes.
I always said yes.

So we went.

I had the car—my battered Mini Cooper, valiant but wildly unfit for group excursions. Four was pushing it. But no one hesitated. We squeezed in, knees to chests, boots to backs, the air thick with laughter and body heat before we even hit the road.

Oggy, as we called it, was ten miles away. The drive was uneventful, if a little breathless. The kind of ride where you didn’t talk so much as exhale your way through it.

When we arrived, the gate made its stance perfectly clear:
TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.
We ignored it.

We parked by the water’s edge, still wrapped in the kind of teenage certainty that passes for cleverness. No swimwear, no plan—just a loose agreement that clothes were optional, modesty negotiable, and the moon hopefully in hiding.

Then came the light.

A beam cut through the condensation on the window. Jules lit up before I even clocked where it was coming from. And for a second or two, I just stared. The light seemed to know who the main character was.

Then: the knock.

Loud. Sharp. Final.

A second knock. And a massive hand gesturing, without room for misinterpretation, to roll the window down.

I did.

Outside stood a man who looked like he’d been poured into a ranger uniform at birth. Tall, broad, and clutching a flashlight roughly the size of a policeman’s truncheon. Scottish. Stone-faced.

“What d’ye think yer doing here?” he barked.
“There’s a big bloody sign. You drove right past it.”

I tried. I really did.
“We’re lost,” I offered.
“Someone was feeling ill.”
Something else about fresh air.
Each excuse more desperate than the last.

He stared. Unmoved.

“Everyone out. Now.”

Jules and Ledder—on army leave and playing co-pilot—got out first. Then they pushed the seat forward and the rest began to emerge.

That’s when it started.

“Four…”
“Five…”
“Six…”
“Seven…”
“…EIGHT?!”

He stepped back and blinked at the car like it had birthed us.
“Eight of you?! In that?!”
It wasn’t a question. It was an indictment.

Now, for context: the original Mini is barely a car. It’s a wheeled tin can with ideas above its station. The Guinness World Record for most people crammed inside is 27. We weren’t aiming to break it. We were just trying to impress a girl. Or maybe outrun a quiet kind of ache.

From here, the ranger launched into a tirade—half lecture, half operatic lament, all thick with Scottish outrage. I’ve tried writing it out before, but you lose something without the accent. And no, I won’t attempt it in the narrated version either. It lives in that sacred space between Billy Connolly and divine judgment, and it’s best left there.

The ranger looked us over—bleached hair, patched jackets, adolescent bravado leaking from our seams—and sighed. Long and low.

“It’s time youse lot get yersen back home.”

We took it as our cue to start climbing back in.

That was a mistake.

“NO!” he snapped. “Ah’m not lettin’ ye do that again.”

And just like that, I was ordered to ferry half the group home while the rest stayed behind—with him.

Ledder, loyal and long-suffering, rode with me both ways. A mile into the first trip, we had to pull over. We weren’t sure whether to laugh or cry. I think I did a bit of both.

Ledder suggested turning back early to collect the others.
I said no.
Good decision.

The ranger was still there when we returned.

He watched in silence as we loaded the rest into the car.
Then, just before we pulled away, he said:
“Let this be a lesson to you—and don’t let me see you in these parts again.”

But I swear—swear—there was a glint in his eye.
Like he knew exactly what kind of night this was.
Maybe he’d had one, once.