A DOZEN hardy souls took the plunge when the Millennium Arctic Club had its annual dip off Sheerness.

Organiser of the Sheerness Swimming Club and Lifeguard Corps’s off-shoot, Phil Crowder, said: “I think it helped that it was a nice calm sea, with sunshine but no wind but the water was still flaming cold.

“When I was a child it was very popular and I did it 10 years running back in the Sixties and Seventies but then it lapsed and we revived it for the Millennium.

“Now we have the re-opened swimming pool at the Sheerness Leisure Centre, our numbers are increasing.”

The rewards of wading in were a badge, designed by Phil and drawn by a Royal Mail colleague of a Polar bear on an ice floe dipping a toe in the water, and hot drinks.

Phil addded: “We always time the dip to coincide with the high tide so there’s not so far to run back up the beach afterwards.

“The youngest going in by the Lifeboat station was Robbie Robins who is seven, and both his father Kelvin and sister Sophie also went in while his mother Julie was doing the hot drinks.

“I was the oldest at 45 and I managed to get about five or six metres off shore while some others ran in got wet and got out.”