Every other day I've been getting up at the crack of dawn, slipping on my bathing costume and cycling down to the beach for a bracing hour or so of splashing about in the sea and breathing in the crisp morning air.
Bobbing up and down amongst the waves is a great way to unwind and always leaves me feeling calm and refreshed.
Of course, I could just pop down to my local leisure centre and swim a couple of dozen lengths, but who wants to jump into a chlorine-soaked pool when they can take a swim under an open sky? Not me, at any rate.
Given the choice of swimming in an open-air lake, river or lagoon to being corralled into an artificially heated rectangle of turquoise water and I'm pretty sure most people would choose the outdoor option.
Luckily, thanks to some sterling work by government agencies and pressure groups like Surfers Against Sewage, our rivers and seas are cleaner, safer and more accessible than at any time in living memory and more and more of Britain's 12 million swimmers are taking the plunge and getting hooked on outdoor swimming.
Making the leap from swimming in an indoor environment to one that's outside isn't without its dangers though.
For a start, there aren't any lifeguards to help you out if you get into any difficulties, so it's essential that you always swim with a friend.
Avoid areas with riverweed - you can get tangled up in it - and blue-green algae, a powdery scum found on the edges of some lakes in the summer, as this can cause rashes or sickness.
Never swim after drinking alcohol or a full meal and don't be tempted to dive into a stretch of water if you don't know its depth. Always make sure you have an exit strategy before you get in and avoid swimming in canals and urban rivers because of the risk of Weil's disease.
And don't be tempted to take a dip in a reservoir, either, as they're too cold and too deep.
Most importantly, make sure you know the quality of the stretch of water you intend swimming in.
The Environment Agency (www.environment-agency.gov.uk) monitors all our rivers, streams and lakes and grades them on a scale of cleanliness from A to F. An interactive map on its website makes checking this information incredibly easy.
If you're looking for a sewage-free beach, there are currently five different UK beach awards to contend with, but the Marine Conservation Society's Good Beach Guide is the only one that concentrates on water quality.
Again, it has a clickable map on its website (www.goodbeach guide.co.uk) that covers more than 1200 beaches in the UK.
If you want to explore swimming spots further afield, a couple of good books on outdoor swimming have recently been published.
Kate Rew's Wild Swim: the Best Places to Swim Outdoors in Britain (£16.99) is a hardback book full of amusing anecdotes of her trips around the UK in search of the perfect swim. It's an enthralling and entertaining read with some truly inspiring photography by Dominick Tyler.
As you'd expect from the founder of the Outdoor Swimming Society (www.outdoorswimming society.com), Kate writes with infectious enthusiasm about her specialist subject and covers more than 100 swims in detail as well as listing the location of more than 200 other swim spots.
If you're looking for a more practical guide, Daniel Start's Wild Swimming (£14.95) is crammed full of tips and advice as well as write-ups on 150 outside swims.
This has more of a guidebook feel about it, with tons of background information as well as postcodes and Ordnance Survey references for each location. So if you've ever wanted to swim Loch Ness, take a dip in a Victorian sea-bathing pool or splash about on a beach in the Outer Hebrides, you'll find out all the info you need to do just that right here.
For those of you who want to make the transition from indoor to outdoor swimming a little easier, there are a number of holiday firms that specialise in swimming breaks.
One of the best, Swim Trek (www.swimtrek.com; 020 8696 6220), offers weekend swimming trips to the Lake District and the River Thames – ideal for your first wild swims.
So what are you all waiting for? Go on. Dive in.