Gävle lies ca 100km north of Uppsala, and is famous, at least in Sweden, for being being the place of Gevalia coffee. It also sounds like the Swedish, javle, which translates as devil but really means something closer to "bloody ". It is a pretty nice old town, but today we weren't being tourists.....our mission was ice. The motely crew for this occassion was: Jenny, me, Anke, Gösta, & Mark.

It was a wet warmish ( close to +0°C ) and hell windy day, and we were worried about the condition of the ice. We had chosen this place because we had heard Friluftsfrämjandet would be skating here, and we missed out signing up on their tour. We found the buses, parked, geared up and were out onto the ice. First time for this winter, and as usual i wobbled off in my enormous plastic telemark boots. Sure enough you gdt back the few skills you learnt the year before and soon you are scooting along, wind blowing you along nicely.

Mark stopped to play with his small kite, which in theory would speed him across the ice. In practise it got tangled and dragged him through all the water on the surface of the ice. Gösta (left)skated off to see if he was OK, and then came flying back. As he returned he hit a crack, overbalanced, and ended up running on both skates, before losely balanced on one skate brought himself to a stop. I've come to expect these things of Gösta, but this recovery was impressive and piss funny to watch.

Sea ice is more dodgy than lake ice, because its condition can change very quickly. Luckily this was good thick ice, and as we headed north across the wind, we were able to skate with good confidence near the waters edge. Eventually we came to a boat shed and jetty, so we stopped for lunch. The Frilufts tour passed us by, so we got ready to head further north. First across some very cruddy ice, where we had to pole push and walk a bit, but then we hit rock solid black ice, a good 7cm's thick and hard as steel. perfect skating ice. We headed out towards a light house and then just skated around enjoying the ice and the fesh air.

The sun was starting to become a little bit low in the sky, so we flew across the nice ice, battled our way through the rough ice, and got back onto good ice again. The we went bizerk skating in all different directions of the general direction home, simply because we could. At some point Mark beared off into a bay a little bit early. When we caught him up we asked why this bay, to which he said "well the GPS says this is the way home". "ahh yes, but the GPS only thinks in straight lines home, we need to go to the next bay". After a quick discussion we proved it, and raced off for the next bay. (GPS 0; Al 1). We hammered hard into the wind and then reached our original start point.

Off with the skates, into the car and all the way back home again. We had a sauna in the basement when we got back, while Gösta tried to play pool by himslef. Then a nice dinner of Pasta.

Overall: Great to be back on the ice. A little short to be usefull training for the Vikingarännet (80km skating race)