{"id":485539,"date":"2026-01-01T20:52:18","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T20:52:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/485539\/"},"modified":"2026-01-01T20:52:18","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T20:52:18","slug":"hundreds-brave-freezing-firth-of-forth-in-2026-loony-dook-plunge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/485539\/","title":{"rendered":"Hundreds brave freezing Firth of Forth in 2026 Loony Dook plunge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Hundreds of brave souls have started their New Year&#8217;s Day with a bracing plunge into the Firth of Forth as part of the annual &#8216;Loony Dook&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">It is the 40th time the event has taken place at South Queensferry, with many participants wearing colourful fancy dress as they raced into the water.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">The dook, a Scots word meaning to dip or plunge, began on 1 January 1987 when a group of friends went for a swim in the icy water as a hangover cure.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">This year conditions were particularly challenging, with temperatures as low as -2C, as cold Arctic air sweeps across the UK.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">The Met Office has issued <a target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/c1m703l3v5yo\" class=\"sc-f9178328-0 iCaRzc\" rel=\"noopener\">yellow and amber alerts for snow<\/a> across much of Scotland over the coming days.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Blizzard conditions and snow of up to 20cm (7.9ins) has been forecast for parts of the north east, Highland, Perth and Kinross and Angus from Friday into Saturday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">However the biting chill did not stand in the way of the Loony Dook fun, with Scots of all ages taking part.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Some chose sensible swimwear, others took a more colourful approach with onesies, tartan skirts, ponchos and denim shorts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">One couple even chose to take the plunge in wedding attire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hundreds of brave souls have started their New Year&#8217;s Day with a bracing plunge into the Firth of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":485540,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[50,103],"class_list":{"0":"post-485539","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115821828127366027","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/485540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}