The North-East Skinny Dip

This event gets bigger every year. This year, I understand, there were around 450 dippers of all shapes and sizes and with varying degrees of nervousness.

Me and Dawn have been practising, or, I should say, acclimatising with various bivis on Northumbrian beaches. Northumbrian beaches are specially fab at any time, but this time we had Ross Back Sands all to ourselves and a few curious seals for much of the day.

At teatime, we transferred to Druridge Bay where Brian (of the holes in the ground)  turned up and we camped in a quietish bay alongside several bottles of merlot.

At 5:00 am (in the bloody morning) to the unwelcome sound of rain of the flysheets, we got ourselves unready for the dip and by a bit after six we were on the beach where there was a fire-juggler and cafe’s and burning things…

And then we dipped, screaming, cold shocked into the stormy waves of the North Sea. The sea was in a very lively mood and there was a strong drift towards the North Pole. It wasn’t outrageously cold, though. My blogger settings prevent me from publishing any pictures involving obvious willies or bosoms and the camera I used didn’t cope well with the low light conditions.

There was no sunrise, just a cold, grey, spitting dawn.

After, I joined several dippers forming the initials NESD laying face-down in the sand (avoiding pics of willies and breasts again) and before hypothermia properly set in, I was back in the tent in my not-a-onesie and sleeping bag supping hot chicken soup.

And that was that for another year.

I’ve written before about the positive aspects of this event. Even the cold water and weather is positive. It does have an immediate effect on my mood and briefly turns me into a euphoric but goose-pimpled idiot.

Everybody should be skinny-dipping. No, I mean everybody. Really.