While many people spend New Year’s Day sleeping in and recovering from the night before, thousands of Dutch people celebrate a more active New Year tradition—jumping into freezing cold water for a swim.
This year, more than 65,000 of these ‘polar bear’ swimmers took the plunge at 160 lakes, rivers and beaches around the country, despite water temperature of on 7 degrees above freezing.
The biggest crowd, about 10,000 people, took part in the traditional New Year swim off the coast of Scheveningen at midday on January 1.
