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| winter '95-'96 | |
| winter '96-'97 | |
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The copyright of this site and its contents, for those parts not specially mentioned, is by Johan Grootveld.
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Outdoor ice tales.....
I am very grateful with the help of Jamie Hess (USA) in translating the skating stories in
this site.
When the Hague ice-oval "De Uithof" reopens every 1th of
october, I am present there. On my high-tech Raps-fabricated blades, with or without the fellow members of my "core team" (skate friends).
I hope to break my record of 12 min/10 laps of 400 m. My last record (march 1998) even was 50 sec/400 m. !!
If (unfortunately "if" and not "when" in Holland) the winter falls in, the real thing starts. I go for making outdoor skatetours on smooth nature polder ice!!!
You can find me skating in the Alblasserwaard polder, the Westland region or at the Rotte lakes. Enjoying the bright freeze coldness. The sound of scratching
blades on deep black ice. Read about all of it in my skating adventures.
These pages may not be missed by any tour skate enthousiast in Holland!
My skate stories include a small map, on which you can find
out the route I skated. So for someone interested in skating that tour, it makes it easier to do so. You could skate alone or together with others in a KNSB-organised tour.
Page-loading time could be extended because of the maps. Please be patient. If it is a problem to you, just disable the option "auto load images" in your browser.
Tour skating info.
I love skating, as most Dutch people do. In winter if there is nature ice we go out and skate through the polders. When the ice is safe enough there are tours organised.
Its a pity we didn't have real winters the last three years. So the waters didn't freeze up and I visited the "Uithof" 400 meters covered oval in Den Haag weekly. In summer I do biking and (inline) skating. Read about this ("skeeleren" in Dutch) at the counterpart of this site.
The local ice skate clubs organise the original KNSB-tours (Royal Dutch Skaters Ass.)
You can recognise them by a orange-white flag flying over the subscription point. Most of the water surfaces in the western part of Holland are connected to each other,
so there are pointed out tours from 10-200km.
In normal tours you skate the same lap (10-30km) several times, or you make combinations of different laps. Just head for some starting place, buy yourself a stamp-card
and skate. If you fulfill the trip, you get a medal in the end.
On such tours about 5000-10000 people go out skating. You get the necessary info from TV (videotext), newspaper and website:
http://home.wxs.nl/~berthon/toertoch/toertoch.htm
(only in dutch; but it informs you about most existing tours in holland).
The longer trips are only organized during the longer cold periods. Some neighbouring shorter tours are combined. The most famous tours, like the Frisian "11-Stedentocht" (eleven cities tour/race) and the "11-Merentocht" (eleven lakes tour) have restricted entry. You have to be a member (limited admittance now), respectively subscribe several months in advance.
winter 1995-1996
winter 1996-1997
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