EVERY SUMMER PEOPLE gather at a canal in Holland to attempt to pole vault across it.
This is uniquely Dutch sport, Janet Friend reports.
Named the 'fierljeppen' it is a sport combining pole-vaulting, long jump and if misjudged, unplanned swimming.
The sport involves competitors sprinting toward the water and launching themselves into the air on a 12 metre carbon pole.
But the vault is only half the challenge, as mid-flight the competitors must climb the pole, tilt it forward, and aim to land as far as possible on a sandbank.
If they get it wrong they plunge straight into the water.
The sport has its roots traced to the time when farmers used wooden poles to cross their fields, vaulting over the canals running through their lands.
Over time, it evolved from a daily task into a folk challenge, and then into a formal sport, and dates back it is understood to around 1767.
It did not take on in Britain!