Edge

Ice skating can easily consume a large part of a day. The actual skating being the smaller part of it. 

Ice, at all, is not a certain part of winter where I live, neither is snow. I'd say snow is more common than ice but we rarely have longer periods of any of it. The lakes freezes first and if you're lucky you get some good frost nights to make the ice thick enough, about 4 cm, to skate on before snow comes along and makes skating hard because it usually ruins the surface. Sometimes, like this year, even the open sea gets a thick enough layer of ice but finding it can be tricky. Some people, mostly pensioners who have the time to go looking for it, then spreads the knowledge to closed facebook groups. You then have to build a network of friends who might know these people and maybe they share their knowledge about where you find the ice. So, this info-search took me some time and after finding out about this place I packed my stuff and drove for 30 minutes to get there. From the shore the bay looked completely covered in snow but I know from experience that you might find good ice further out though it can be hard to see from the shore. It took me quite a while to find the right direction but after some time I finally got far enough from the shore for the wind to have swept the ice clear of snow and I had a fabulous ride to the little island in the distance. Further out was open water. From the very small island where the picture is taken, it's about two km from the shore.

All in all I got 7,5km of skating, which took me about an hour and a half including a coffee brake on the island before it started to snow and I headed back towards the shore. You'd be surprised how soon the shoreline disappears in heavy snowfall and you quickly loose direction. I didn't want to risk that. All in all about three hours of preparations and driving and almost an hour and a half of skating. But it was absolutely worth it.