Those who travel during the holidays are used to long trips, but only the hardiest would try a 1,900-mile van ride.

Hundreds of hardy swimmers braved the teeth-chattering temperatures of the North Sea as they took part in fundraising festive swims across Suffolk.

These hardy varieties are cold-adapted and are the ancestors for commercially important maize grown around the world.

One characteristic that makes it so hardy is that compared with other bacteria, Klebsiella produces an “extraordinary” amount of mucus, says Kristian Riesbeck, a clinical microbiologist at Lund University.

They are hardy — any flower that grows next to a freeway ain’t no shrinking violet.