Thursday, January 2, 2014

European holiday ...welcome 2014...New Years Day.

There is a 40 year tradition here in the Netherlands, called Nieuwjaarsduik. (New Years Dive). This involves diving into any body of water on New Year's Day. Aysha decided she would like to take part in this at Scheveningen Beach, the nearest venue to us. Lily and JJ thought it would be a great idea to join her.

So off we set, in our newly acquired rental car, to join thousands of other hardy souls on the beach.
First we queued for registration, then found a place to have coffee.





Luckily we were not too far back in the queue!



The participants had made a sign advertising the fact they were from the great down under land!

Once we had made our way through the checkpoint, and received our show bags containing our orange hats, certificate and can of soup, we found a spot on the beach. Here we unloaded our things, set up our sign, and along with thousands off other people,waited for the appointed time of midday, when the dive would begin.

There was entertainment, and lots of dancing music. Lots of encouragement for people to dance and bop along, this helped to keep everyone warm, as it was very cold on the beach. The water temperature was 6 degrees, but I think the wind chill factor on the beach made it less than that. The beach was just a sea of orange hats, at least our heads were warm!






......and they are off and running....the red rope was lowered after the countdown, and along with around 40,000 other slightly insane folk, they were gone!



And it's all over. Almost as soon as the runners were gone, they were returning. In fact, some had not even reached the water, when the first divers were returning to the beach.
Some stayed in longer, enjoying the cold water, but most just had a very quick dip and returned to get dressed and warm up.







The soup company that sponsors the dive distributed hot soup to all who would like some. It's very delicious, a type of pea and ham, called Erwtensoep.

On returning to the car park, we had to queue once again to pay. I think the total waiting time was around half an hour.


The bunny and the bird were getting better acquainted this evening. The bird quite liked the bunnies drinking bowl.



Location:Leiderdorp,The Netherlands

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