Elfstedentocht

A wonderful photo circulated around the net. The Netherlands. But where ? The bridge is pretty standard dutch, it can be anywhere. The signs on the right side could reveal more. So where ?

This is the question I've asked a dutch friend Rudy, who maintains the Save Saab Museum facebook site. He asked and got the answer. It's a shot from Elfstedentocht.

Elfstedentocht (eleven-cities-tour, english wiki) is a ice skating tour in the dutch province of Friesland, which is in the northern part of Holland. In both of the links is a map of the tour. It is almost 200 km long and has thousands of participants. It's happening, when the natural ice in the dutch grachts is thick enough, they say 15 centimeters. OK. So somewhere in Friesland.

Btw. re depth of the grachts : we've been once to a wonderful tour around the dutch channels on a houseboat. One of the papers on the boats stated, that when you fall from the boat into the gracht, before you get into panic, try to stand up. Most of the channels are so shallow, that you can walk out.

So the nice black Saab 96 is from the Elfstedentocht. The Saab is from 1960, the photo from 2011.
A bit more photos are located here, the official photos are made by a magazine called Autovisie. The title page can be found here when you go to the last side "De held van 1963".

A short little story which pleases the heart of a Saab fan.