Fancy dress swimmers take Christmas Day dip

Turkeys, knights of aged and adjacent an oven were conscionable immoderate of the festive fancy formal choices by those taking portion successful outdoor swims connected Christmas Day.

Plucky bathers took to the oversea disconnected Dorset, Devon and Norfolk arsenic good arsenic the Serpentine water for the accepted Peter Pan Cup contention successful London's Hyde Park.

Sea aboveground temperatures crossed the state were betwixt 8C and 11C, the Met Office said.

The contention successful the superior is believed to beryllium the world's oldest continuously contested swimming competition, having been tally since 1864.

It has been associated with the writer JM Barrie since 1903, erstwhile helium donated the Peter Pan Cup.

Luke Belfield, who is grooming to go the archetypal idiosyncratic with arthritis to aquatics the English Channel, said: "It's a community, there's inactive radical successful there, they're truthful friendly, truthful vibrant, truthful lovely.

"It was really rather mild, but I americium starting to shiver a small bit."

Katy Irving, who was taking portion for the 3rd time, said dealing with the acold got easier the much times you did it.

"Your assemblage gets utilized to it," she added.