Posted by Laurence Monkhouse on March 13, 2006 at 08:41:31 from 80.3.128.6 user Laurence_.
In Reply to: Re: Hot Water at Beckfoot and Nature calls posted by Robin on March 13, 2006 at 00:33:57:
It was only about 50 years earlier that the Fellows of an unidentified Cambridge College had objected to the construction of bathrooms on the grounds that undergraduates were only up for eight weeks!
I don't for a moment doubt the swimming in the lake - I have done it often enough, in Windermere, Coniston and other Lakes, and for that matter in the Broads and the Orwell, and these are softer times. It is ok once in. Children anyway seem more impervious to cold - my granddaughters leap in where I think it too cold. And other books - eg Three Men in a Boat - make it clear that it was common practice.
Furthermore Evgenia was Russian and AR had lived in Russia for 10 years. As we have seen in the papers during the past few weeks many Russians consider that breaking a hole in the ice to have a dip is one of life's great joys. Windermere/Coniston would have been tropical compared with this.