Having lived in the south of France I get a lot of 'you must have been swimming every day!', but I tend to be quite picky on what temperature the water is. Our pool used to be heated to 28 degrees Celsius, but I still didn't go near it unless the sun got it closer to 30!
I now sit in absolute awe at the polar bear that swam 426 miles in the Arctic sea. FOUR HUNDRED AND TWENTY SIX MILES. Crikey! The water varied from 2 to 6 degrees and it took the bear 9 days to make the epic journey.
Here is the BBC story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9369000/9369317.stm
