Winter in The Netherlands

It doesn't happen every year that The Netherlands gets some proper winter weather, but this winter there are both long periods with below zero temperatures and significant amounts of snow. Very nice and scenic! Unfortunately the snow gives horrible unreliable ice, so there is not as much ice skating yet as there could have been. And it does cause major problems for transport in general: no trains, no busses, no planes, and long long traffic jams on the roads. Yesterday again, it snowed 15 cm in a couple of hours and the trains stopped, the airport was mostly closed and there were some 200 km of traffic jams just in the northwestern part of The Netherlands. But we went for a beautiful walk in the dunes. As so much snow and ice is unusual in The Netherlands, many local governments are now nearly through their pile of salt they use for the roads, so the road traffic problems could get worse.

Beach between Ijmuiden and Zandvoort.

Windmill park in the sea.

Horses and Scottish cows walk freely through the dunes to keep the vegetation down.

Walking in the Utrecht hills (Utrechtse heuvelrug). We came past the Pyramid of Auterlitz (http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramide_van_Austerlitz (in Dutch)), originally built in the time of Napoleon, in 1804, and recently restored to its full glory.

One of the buildings in Beeckesteijn, one of the large old estates near Driehuis, now open for the public.

Fresh snow!

And a rare photo of myself.

Even prettier with some winter sunshine.

Aren't these cows beautiful?

Stockholm

We needed to use up some Eurobonus points that were about to expire and decided to spent a long weekend in Stockholm. A nice way to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary. We enjoyed some sightseeing in the old town, visited a Dali exhibition in the modern art museum, had a look around the butterfly house and walked around the open air museum Skansen. And, of course, we enjoyed some good food. The selection of restaurants is somewhat bigger and better in Stockholm than in Tromsø. And then there were the Christmas markets with a good selection of foreign and local Swedish food, and we were very happy to find some excellent Dutch cheese and liquorice, Italian sausages, Scottish fudge and local sausage. Alltogether a very pleasant weekend.

Changing of the guards

Beautiful narrow streets in Gamlestan, the old town

Modern art outside the modern art museum

Palace

Butterfly garden

Open air museum Skansen

Great grey owl, Swedish wildlife in the open air museum

The aquarium inside Skansen has quite a few reptiles too

Skating on Prestvannet

It had been cold for some time now, but no snow, so ideal conditions for skating. The day these photos were taken, Sunday 29 November, we did just have a few cm of snow, but cold dry snow on cold ice is not a problem for skating, the snow doesn't freeze on the ice. Prestvannet is right in Tromsø, on the top of the island Tromsøya, and a popular spot for families. So we skated around families and kids playing ice hockey, it was fun! Most people use ice hockey skates here, but there were a few others on 'proper' long distance skates.

Tromsdalstinden in the background.

Kjølen

One of the last weekends before ´mørketid´ (the period without sun), in the middle of November, we went for a hike up Kjølen. There was very little snow for the time of the year, but lots of ice, which made hiking tricky in places. It was nice, though, lots of reindeer, and no other people.

Kåfjorddalen

We went to Kåfjorddalen last weekend, some 150 km east of Tromsø, and it turned out to be a fascinating place. There are 2 deep canyons, one of them apparently the deepest of northern Europe, and there are old copper mines up in the mountains with ruins of the smelter, cablecar and various buildings for the workers and the director down in the valley, Ankerlia. The mines closed in 1918, but you can still clearly see the damage of the sulphuric smoke from the smelter to the surroundings. There is very little snow yet for the time of the year, but it has been cold and there were some excellent icy waterfalls and other ice formations.

Ruins of the smelter buildings.

Waste from the smelter.

The damage around the smelter is still clearly visible, after nearly a century.

Into the deepest canyon in northern Europe, Sorbmejohka.

Nice ice formations underneath a waterfall.

On our way to Storfossen, the main waterfall, we suddenly came across this icy wonderland.

It turned out that there was a spring just above a waterfall. It had been very windy blowing the water up and back over the edge, coating everything in ice. We met some locals who told us that they had never seen it this spectacular. We were lucky!

Icy teeth around the waterfall.

Everything covered in ice.

The main canyon, which had a major waterfall at the end.

Fieldwork

I have been out doing fieldwork for quite a few days in October this year. Much of it was sampling for fission track dating and involved collecting samples from road cuts, quarries and coastal outcrops. But often in beautiful areas.

Small scale en-echelon fractures.

Rock art.

Fieldwork on Senja, after the first frost and snow.

Senja west coast.

Exposed fault plane along a bicycle/foot path near Finnsnes.

Flatlying shear zone underneath massive wall of granite. Store Blåmann.

Ersfjorden

Stortinden

The weather forecast was excellent so we decided to head up a mountain, Stortinden on Ringvassøya. We didn't quite get to the top as we started late and the days are short, but it was a beautiful trip in the sun, with great views and several encounters with ptarmigan and elk. It was quite misty when we left in the morning and when we climbed up we could see the clouds hanging over the fjords.

Patterns in the ice on small ponds.

View towards Tromsø, with both the island Tromsøya and the fjord still partially covered by fog.

We brought a little sled and had fun sliding down. Not enough snow yet to slide down the whole mountain.

And a full moon helped us on the way down.