Stories about skating tours on natural outdoor ice, and inline road skating.


dangers on ice
skata claus..
song & poem
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The copyright of this site and its contents, for those parts not specially mentioned, is by Johan Grootveld. Site design by Ir Grootveld / Blinksoft.

Ice fun.....
Ice skating... It's just melancholy. Maybe we'll meet again on outdoor nature ice!

So many Dutchmen visited this site when there was OUTDOOR ICE here for a few days!! Looking for a nice short tour to skate. More than 600 visitors a day were no exception!! Skate, read the stories and shiver... But mind the dangers of the tempting natural ice...

The outdoor ice risks.

Before putting on your skates, here you find the most important ice risks:

Rush shores where temperature is higher.
Warmer spots are usually existing under bridges.
Wind blow holes in the ice. These spots freeze later than the surrounding ice and are weaker.
Ducks that gather together keep large holes open in the ice.
Water that streams because of pumping engines nearby makes the ice weaker.
Connections between broad and narrow gives streaming weakness in the ice.
The sunside of a water surface is weaker.
Floes of ice aren't always recognizable. They can be very large. In between weak "canals" can be the result of wind and floe movements.
Large floes pushing against each other stand up, making the spot instable and dangerous.

Explanation of the dutch text:
Littje Sister...
Weekly survey: "Was is possible for little sister to skate on natural ice?"
"The answer is no.".
There was natural ice.....little sister had her skates on.....
but she didn't manage keeping herself upright...

In the case you break through the ice, be quiet and try to return from where you came. Move yourself forward, lying on your breast until you feel solid ice under you again. There are special icepins for this, you always wear them around your neck. Never make a polder tour alone. Take friends with you, or at least a cellular handphone wrapped in plastic.

Skata Claus.

Even Santa Claus doesn't expect any winter ice in Holland any more. The poem below, by one of this sites visitors, dates from last year, but this year both Claus and prof Röder from the Berlin university forecast the same bad thing again....

And there he was, in wind and rain,
our good old friend, the Saint again.
Wondering if there would be a present for me,
cause I invested much in bean soup and fresh tea.
But I read it at his face my dear,
there won't be nature ice again this year.
So I opened the door,
maybe I could expect some more.
And then he gave a cheque to me,
"For winter ice, here is not the place to be!"
Two tickets Austrian Weissensee is what I got,
and when the temp here raised a lot,
I was on the plane with all my guts,
"Those Dutch winters are just peanuts.."
The Freie Universität Berlin proved once more,
to predict well, as I read before.
Three hurray's for the Berlin gentlemen,
it will be an iceless winter here again....

Best wishes, Santa Claus