Wintry weekend ends without serious incident

Monday 11 January 2010

The Netherlands was in the grip of winter this weekend but despite the official extreme weather warning there was little trouble on the roads.

Nevertheless, the overnight frost and yesterday's snow are still causing slippery conditions, particularly on minor roads, and drivers are again being warned to be careful in the Monday rush hour, motoring organisation ANWB said.

In particular, bus services in Lelystad and other parts of Flevoland and Leiden are being affected by slippery roads.

Trains

The railways are expected to be almost back to normal on Monday after a weekend of reduced train services as a precautionary measure. But there are fewer intercity trains operating between Rotterdam and the Hague to Utrecht.

Dutch Rail had run empty trains throughout Saturday night in the north of the country to keep the rails free of drifting snow and ice.

The company said on Sunday night it had handed out 250,000 free cups of coffee, tea and cocoa to passengers who were faced with longer journey times as well as sandwiches, sweets and pea soup.

Winter sports

Thousands of people took advantage of the weekend's snow. On the coast west of Amsterdam a short stretch of road over the dunes known as the Kopje van Bloemendaal was closed to traffic and turned into a sledging track.

And on the IJsselmeer lake, kite surfers were out in force, snowboarding over the snow and ice in the strong easterly wind.

In Limburg, the Cauberg hill in Valkenburg has been turned into an impromptu ski zone, with three pistes and an après ski bar.

Several hundred people also took part in this weekend's ice walk across the frozen Wadden Sea in the north of the country.

However, a number of events have been cancelled because of the bad weather. Plans to hold a sleigh race in Groningen were cancelled for the third time on Sunday because the slippery roads and drifting snow had made it too dangerous to get to the city park where the event was scheduled to take place, the Telegraaf reported.

Accidents

Three people were killed on Saturday afternoon when their car slid off the A224 in Gelderland and hit first a tree and then another car. The two people in the second car were taken to hospital.

Some 100,000 households in the coastal area north of Noordwijk were without power for some four hours on Saturday because of network problems. The power cut was not connected to excessive demand for electricity because of the wintry weather, a national grid spokesman said on Sunday.

Although hospitals had put extra staff on standby to cope with the expected surge in ice-related injuries, they were not as busy as expected, the Telegraaf reported.

© DutchNews.nl

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