From sinner

Without any doubt this is the strangest of all St Andrews traditions and, let's be honest, there's a lot of competition. The Celtic festival of Beltane was a fire festival and so how do the good people of the university celebrate? They celebrate by jumping into the largest, and coldest, available body of water. On May Day, just as the sun begins to rise, you will find students, who obviously need their heads examined, jumping into the North Sea. Yes, you read that right. In the early hours of the morning, students are already up and about. Dressed only in the flimsiest of swimwear (and sometimes not even that) students dive in to the sea, and it may not just be a figure of speech that the first ones in are the ones to break the ice. While all this madness is happening, other students are singing "glees" (whatever they are). Honestly, you could not make this stuff up. The one sensible part of the whole thing is the restorative powers of whisky. Well, that, and the nice fires.