If You Start The Year By Jumping In The North Sea...

The team of happy divers wades out

 

... it can only improve from that point onwards.

Actually that's not quite true, since I prefer to do my New Year's Day sea swim wearing just about every single piece of neoprene I own. Myself and my buddies headed out over the St Mary's Island Causeway, to admiring gasps (or possibly gasps of disbelief that anyone is that mad) from onlookers. The tide was up to our calves, but this is not a problem when you have 8mm of neoprene on your legs and some sturdy diving boots.

I waved cheerfully to my mother, who hopefully was not having a minor panic attack at seeing one of her offspring jumping blithely into the waves, and jumped in after everyone else.

St Mary's Island swims are usually called "rough water swims", for the simple reason that the object of the dive is to jump off the side of the island, and swim round to the point where the waves break, and splash around in them until you get tired of having seawater up your sinuses, and head back for a coffee and a fresh doughnut from the van in the car park. (Another reason St Mary's is such a popular site for divers.)

There were no seals, but there were plenty of waves. We jumped around in the waves, struck silly poses on rocks (and were promptly knocked off them into the sea), and performed the diving exit technique known as "Undignified Scramble" to get out. Wading back over the thigh-high water on the causeway, I waved to my (possibly relieved) mother, and made the universal hand signal for "Have you got the Thermos?"