Best water I ever drank came from the head od a natural spring. Boy that was good. And It was colddddd!!!
Ditto. I went to Andersonville, Georgia with a friend a few years ago to visit the site of the infamous Civil War prison camp and the National POW museum. If you don't know much about it, read up a little about the beyond-appalling conditions that Union soldiers were held in there. The camp was built with a creek running through it, but the Confederate encampment was upstream and both Union and Confederate soldiers used the stream as drinking water source, washroom, and toilet. A filthier setup probably couldn't have been designed. Thousands died because of it. You'll read of a thunderstorm in early 1865 (IIRC) and a lightning strike during it that opened a freshwater spring just inside the prison walls, uphill from the creek. The prisoners named it Providence Spring, and it saved many lives in the last days of the camp's existence. The spring still flows, and a stone house was built over it about a hundred years ago. The water flows into a basin, out the side and down to join that nearby creek.
The day we visited, a blistering hot Dog-Days-of-August-in-South-Georgia Tuesday, and after walking all over the prison site for a couple of hours, we found that the US Park Service has posted signs in front of and inside the stone house that read, "WARNING! This Water Is Not Fit For Human Consumption!" After due consideration of just why it isn't (because the government hasn't added anything to it, of course) we drank long and deep of the cold, clear water.
Bar none, it was the best water I've ever tasted.