Balmaclellan man Roland Chaplain has always been a great outdoors champion.
At 79 he cycles even on sub-zero days when frozen fingers can’t work brakes or gears.
Regular dooks in Woodhall Loch near Laurieston are also part of his wellbeing routine – even in the depths of winter.
The source of his love for wild swimming lies high in the hills, when in all weathers Roland would accompany the Galloway Mountain Rescue Team on training exercises almost 40 years ago.
In the less-regulated and low-spec 1980s, keeping clothing and boots dry was a must for members – which sometimes involved unconventional tactics.
“On several occasions I was invited to go up into the hills with the team to understand how decisions were made,” recalls Roland.
“I wanted to see how important it was operationally for searches to have weather forecasting as detailed as possible for callouts.
“One or two members were into wild swimming – they felt it was an important part of their training that you had to go through ice-cold
water.
“So they would strip off and either wade the burn carrying their gear or throw their clothes across and swim over.
“That got me into a mindset of thinking ‘hey, I could do this more often’.”
For Roland, swimming in water only a few degrees above freezing has benefits beyond keeping fit.
“For anyone wild swimming there seems to be immunity benefits,” he explains.
“That’s maybe because your exposure to more sunlight, even in winter, means your body produces more vitamin D.
“Loch swimming tunes up your whole circulation.
“The key is to control your breathing, relax and enjoy the sensation.
“There’s a group that swims regularly in Loch Ken in wetsuits.
“I think doing that you lose a bit of the experience because you are not completely in tune with the elements.
“But I’m not one of those marathon swimmers.”
Deep winter in Galloway doesn’t stop Roland from taking to the water but sometimes swimming is physically impossible.
“I went into Woodhall Loch recently but that was not a swim,” he laughs.
“I only broke enough ice to make a big enough space so I could take a quick dip then get straight back out again.
“It took a bit of stamping on the ice before I could clear enough away.
“Keeping good mental health is so important when so many people are struggling at this particular time.”
“It’s just the connection with the water I enjoy,” adds Roland.
“The water just feels so good. Communing with nature can help a great deal.
“Quite a bit of work has been done on the benefits.
“This goes right back to my childhood when I loved going in the sea.”
Roland’s life began as a war baby in 1941, in Bournemouth on the southern coast of England.
Two years previously, fascist dictator Mussolini gave Roland’s mother Eleanor Rothe two days to get out of Italy or face arrest.
She had to abandon her South Tyrol abode in Merano, a handful of miles from the Austrian border, and fled across the French frontier.
Eleanor made it to England in the summer of 1939, just days before war broke out.
Her only possessions the clothes she stood up in.
The 41-year-old was an accomplished pianist and somehow, weeks later, she was followed by her beloved baby grand piano, which arrived in a crate at the family’s lodgings.
Her repertoire was as varied as her lineage, which was a mixture of German, Dutch and Scottish.
“My mother’s grandmother was from Leith and she always felt herself to be a Celt,” Roland explains.
“After my father died my mother moved to the Glenkens and brought her piano.
“When she died it was sold and is still being used by a local piano teacher.”
Roland’s father Leon Kaplan, like so many in pre-war Europe, was a stateless citizen.
One of the reasons was his part-Jewish ancestry which was a dangerous attribute in Nazi times.
While Eleanor was making her way across Europe Leon, a big strong man who could turn his hand to any practical task, was living a nomadic existence.
A keen mountaineer and skier, Leon always carried a specially-made whistle so he could summon help in dangerous situations.
“He was working off a fishing boat at Spitzbergen off Norway’s arctic coast,” explains Roland.
“Where he landed and how he got back to England I have no idea.
“As soon as he got to England straight away he and my mother got married in a registry office.”
The date was September 25, 1939, three weeks after the Second World War began.
To aid their naturalisation, the couple’s German surname was anglicised from Kaplan to Chaplain which means the same – curate, or priest.
Leon, whose adventures included trekking across the Himalayas into China, was fearless in dangerous situations.
His skills soon caught the eye of the British government and in James Bond style was sent on covert missions into enemy territory.
“He was a man who lived by his wits,” admits Roland.
“He had the odd bullet wound to show for his trouble.
“I still have a coin he had in his wallet that stopped a bullet hitting his heart and saved his life.”
Growing up, the young Roland was very much connected to water and the sea.
And long walks along Bournemouth beach were as much out of necessity as for pleasure.
“We had little money and I had to fend for myself,” recalls Roland.
“I often went beachcombing not just to pass the time but to look for coins.
“People would sometimes drop money out of their pockets while sitting on deck chairs on the beach.
“Finding coins was a matter of knowing how the interaction of sand and tides work.
“That way you knew where they were likely to be deposited.
“Nowadays with all these metal detectorists you would not have had a chance!”
An inheritance allowed the Chaplains to send the young Roland to boarding school.
A theology degree at Birmingham University followed but meteorology and climatology were Roland’s real passions.
He became director at Edgbaston Observatory in 1964 where he helped develop the first radio weather service in the UK.
Roland brought his expertise north in 1983, when he set up a weather centre at Laurieston.
The service began as Weather Watchers, then briefly Impact Weather.
Keen to make weather bulletins more accessible to Joe public, in 1985 Roland got daily broadcasting slots on Radio Scotland – and immediately created a right stooshie with the forecasting establishment
He joined Jimmy Mack’s early morning show, musician and singer Jimmy McGregor for McGregor’s Gathering before noon, and finally the afternoon show with Ken Bruce who years later took over Terry Wogan’s morning slot on Radio 2.
Roland was commissioned to broadcast five-minute, thrice-daily weather bulletins by Richard Titchen, BBC Scotland’s producer for light entertainment and popular music.
The slots were immensely popular with listeners from Shetland to Galloway phoning in their weather queries.
More than that, the format of combining on-the-spot reportage with meteorological analysis was way ahead of its time.
“I had a battery of phones I could use,“ says Roland.
“Weather watchers across Scotland would tell me what the conditions were wherever they were.
“Then folk would phone in from all over the place with questions about what the weather was going to be.
“Once a woman called in from Penicuik who said she was snowphobic and simply wanted to know if there was snow forecast.
“We had over 1,000 people who would phone information into us.
“This was before the internet – it was a different era.”
Roland’s phone-in would often be a three-way discussion between myself, the caller, and the show’s host.
“Jimmy McGregor would play music then chat to somebody about what the weather was doing in their local
area.
“The caller could be a taxi driver in Glasgow or a fisherman in the isles.
“We had a snowplough driver on the Cairn o’ Mount, mountain rescue team members.
“They were from all walks of life – it worked really well.
“I even had everybody’s map reference so I could pinpoint where they were.
“I bought the whole set of Ordnance Survey maps for the whole of Scotland!”
Roland’s little weather show seemed set to become a fixture – but a storm was approaching from the south.
The Met Office, as the official – and establishment – provider of weather information to the BBC, did not take kindly to anybody invading their turf.
Especially a Scottish operation whose light-hearted yet informative approach was already attracting attention from other broadcast media.
“The listeners felt that we were giving them what they wanted, not a dry weather forecast that had been put out six hours earlier.
“I heard it on good authority that the Met Office told the BBC that they would stop their service for the whole of the UK if Radio Scotland did not end this experiment.
“It appeared that the Met was alarmed our pilot could go huge across the network and their monopoly role would be broken.
“So barely three months after we started the plug was pulled on our weather slot.
“I was really hurt because I had put a lot of work into it.
“It stopped at the end of March, 1985.”
Core funding for the business allowed development of the Mountain Weather Information Service, now run by former Met Office expert Geoff Monk.
“We did not ever get the business to the size where it was going to become a major industry player,” admits Roland.
“I don’t know whether I would have wanted to get into that anyway.”
Significant weather events were many – but one in particular Roland will never forget.
“There was a blizzard in mid-March in 1996 when half a metre of snow fell,” recalls Roland.
“I remember making an improvised stretcher on runners for my mother who was in the mid-nineties. That was the only way we could get her from where she lived in Laurieston to where we were in the village. We had to rescue her and there were many other people who were completely cut off.”
Meanwhile, Roland loves the Glenkens, its sense of community and tolerance.
“Galloway is a wonderful place.”
