The cold spell and the forecast of further icy weather has encouraged hopes of being able to skate on the Fens, in eastern England, for first time in eight years.
Roger Giles, who posts regular updates on the condition of the ice near his home in Welney, Cambridgeshire, said he thought there was a 70% chance of skating by the end of the week.
“I’m damned excited. We all are,” he said as forecasters extended warnings of snow and ice for later in the week and temperatures dropped to -8.9C (15.9F) in some areas.
Giles said: “A couple more days of -5C like last night and we could be skating on the very shallow patches, so we are quite close. You really need -8C frost at night for two or three nights to really get a good skating surface, but -5C, like it was last night, for three days would give us something.”
Today Welney wash just of a1101 but the larger areas are still open water we are getting there pic.twitter.com/QKdki21Wc8
— Fen Skaters (@FenSkaters) February 27, 2018
Giles is among people in fen skating who will decide if the ice is thick enough. Three others will decide if a speed skating race meeting can be held.
He explained: “Malcolm Robinson, Dave Smith and our chairman, Nigel Blake, are the big cheeses that give it the check out before we can race. I’m about 70% sure that we’ll be on the ice in some shape or form. I doubt if we’ll be racing this week, but we’ll probably have a few skaters on some of the safer patches.”
The challenge will be sweeping the snow off the ice. Giles said: “We have boards on long sticks to push the snow off to make a 400m track. It can be quite difficult.”
However, he urged skaters not to visit the Fens for such action just yet. “Everybody is getting excited and they all think they are going to jump on a train from London and get off at Littleport [Cambridgeshire] and come and skate. But not for two or three days.”
He added: “You have to be careful, even at Welney where the water is only a few feet deep, because there are deeper ditches criss-crossing the field and rivers at the edges. So you could waltz up on to a river. You’ve got to be so careful.”
The Guardian covered the last Fen skating meeting in January 2010. Giles said: “Your chap from the Guardian came down in 2010 and got stuck in a snowdrift and our girls from the office had to pull him out and save him from a snowy death in a fen drove.”
In the Netherlands the cold snap prompted hopes of the first Elfstedentocht this century. This marathon 125-mile (200km) ice-skating race between between 11 Friesland towns last took place in 1997. But Dutch officials have warned that the chances of a race this year are small.
