Frozen waves

Having seen a frozen harbour, I realised that there was a big chance that the sea itself might be frozen... Even knowing this, I was totally shocked as we walked up the last sand dune - it was all TOTALLY white as far as the eye could see - the sand was completely covered again - and there were lines of irregularities in the ice that I quickly realised must represent the waves... I had to go closer to join the other people walking out all over the sea.

It was totally surreal - the sun was shining in an azure blue sky, the temperature was around -10' so it was crisply cold and calm, almost without a wind. There were people cross country skiing on the beach, others walking along the beach just like normal and lots were playing in amongst the frozen waves. Getting out there was challenging for me - the ice started in what would have been the wet sand, even higher than the waves - then there was a litle ridge at what would have been the line of the last breaking wavelets.

Once over that, the ice flattened out - lucky there had been recent snowfall, so the snow made it possible to walk over the crunchy ice.There were a few small ridges of what must have been small waves breaking and then out about 10m from the beach there was an amazing line of cracked slabs of ice loaded up on top of each other. It was so random - and almost artistic - in the different shapes and orientations.

But I was still preplexed at the force that must have broken ice almost 15cm thick into giant slabs and then deposited them on top of each other like this - I would have loved to have seen this in real time... And so of course all the grown up boys out there were picking up the biggest pieces of ice that they could and throwing it down onto the ice - most of the time it did not even break!

But Markus did find one little hole in the ice, smashed his large slab of ice into it and the ice broke, to reveal the water underneath it all... We were having so much fun it was hard to go back in - just like a great swim in the moving waves...