UK - Mid-Wales, White male, Age 30-60, 6ft+, found Oct 2024 in Claerwen Reservoir wearing wetsuit

[Glojo]

How would someone in the UK on holiday know about a remote reservoir in central Wales which, according to locals, receives very few visitors? Yes, I know it could be spotted on Google Earth but even so, there needs to be a reason for a foreign tourist to go there rather than to a better known and more accessible

How do you know? Have you tried?

Its pretty hard getting a wetsuit on yourself when you are alive.

 

[Glojo]

Coming back to this case again, it really is quite perplexing. We have had a number of high profile drownings determined to be suicides in the UK in the past couple years. None of them wearing wetsuits. You’d think if a deep cold reservoir was where you chose to end your life, you wouldn’t think about the cold. The buoyancy it provided alone would make it challenging. I swim in exactly these sorts of places and I don’t wear a wetsuit because it’s too awkward with the buoyancy.

But if suicide wasn’t what happened here, where is his stuff? I think kayaking or canoeing might be one possibility, where the ‘stuff’ all went down with the kayak or whatever. But you can’t get a kayak to and from there without a vehicle. Even if someone dropped him off, they would have been returning to collect him at a certain time, and you wouldn’t just be like ‘oh well’ and carry on if a kayaker didn’t make a pre-specified meeting.

Most importantly, no one seems to be missing him, or at least hasn’t made a report in the UK. Not a friend or family member, or a landlord, or an employer.

I would really like to know if there is a chance he was non-British, maybe a bit of a free spirit, off on an adventure and no one has quite clocked that he’s off the radar yet. MOO

 

[Glojo]

Coming back to this case again, it really is quite perplexing. We have had a number of high profile drownings determined to be suicides in the UK in the past couple years. None of them wearing wetsuits. You’d think if a deep cold reservoir was where you chose to end your life, you wouldn’t think about the cold. The buoyancy it provided alone would make it challenging. I swim in exactly these sorts of places and I don’t wear a wetsuit because it’s too awkward with the buoyancy.

But if suicide wasn’t what happened here, where is his stuff? I think kayaking or canoeing might be one possibility, where the ‘stuff’ all went down with the kayak or whatever. But you can’t get a kayak to and from there without a vehicle. Even if someone dropped him off, they would have been returning to collect him at a certain time, and you wouldn’t just be like ‘oh well’ and carry on if a kayaker didn’t make a pre-specified meeting.

Most importantly, no one seems to be missing him, or at least hasn’t made a report in the UK. Not a friend or family member, or a landlord, or an employer.

I would really like to know if there is a chance he was non-British, maybe a bit of a free spirit, off on an adventure and no one has quite clocked that he’s off the radar yet. MOO

The only scenario that I can come up with that makes sense in my head is that he was camping up there with someone that he wasn't meant to be with. Maybe he went for an early or late swim and she (or he) woke to find him gone waited but he never returned. Then they didnt want to call emergency services because they weren't meant to be there so they just packed up and left???? It would explain why there was no stuff or vehicle and no hotel booking or taxi ride. Speculation I know but otherwise it is a body dump and then why is he wearing a wetsuit?

 

[dotr]

dbm

 

[CSIAngus]

The investigators must know much more that we're being told. From the postmortem, we're only told that he'd been in water for 12 weeks, yet there will be very much more information than that. Zone 3 Agile wetsuits have batch numbers in the inner zipper flap, yet no mention of when the production run of that suit took place which would provide a terminus post quem for the sale. That range was launched in 2021, so had it been sold 3 years before death or been purchased near to death? I find the tiny morsels of info we've been given even more frustrating than the endless speculation, including my own.

 

[FaerieDust]

The only scenario that I can come up with that makes sense in my head is that he was camping up there with someone that he wasn't meant to be with. Maybe he went for an early or late swim and she (or he) woke to find him gone waited but he never returned. Then they didnt want to call emergency services because they weren't meant to be there so they just packed up and left???? It would explain why there was no stuff or vehicle and no hotel booking or taxi ride. Speculation I know but otherwise it is a body dump and then why is he wearing a wetsuit?

Either that or he packed his stuff up before getting into the water and left it in a nearby forested/shrubby/grassy area off-path or something, and since these areas are not well travelled beyond paths, nobody has found it yet.

Imagine a green/brown hiking backpack in a hollow of a tree or under a bush or something... by now it would be buried in leaves or plant matter and perhaps not obvious at all.

Some images of the area by a travel writer, sets the scene pretty well.
To quote:

Out in the squelchy grassland beyond the pass stood a stone row – two monoliths roughly shaped into slabs, two massive boulders alongside, and a standing stone five feet tall. Who thought it worthwhile to align them up here five or six thousand years ago, and why? There’s no knowing – but the view was beautiful, even under the mist, a keyhole glimpse of the screes, crags and high slopes cradling Garreg-ddu Reservoir.

Down through a sweet-smelling conifer plantation among rain-polished liverworts and mosses, with Caban-coch reservoir lying below, and then on along a bumpy and puddled old track beside the loudly rushing Afon Claerwen. Two red kites circled high over Rhiwnant Farm, where black cattle were enjoying their last graze of the year before the farmer put them under cover for the winter. A tough old ewe perched precariously on top of a stone wall, cropping whatever greenery she could find among the roots of a hazel hedge.

('Afon' means 'river' in Welsh btw, and Garreg-ddu means 'black stone')