"What I love most is the crunching of the ice under the skates and the sensation of gliding," said Marie-Therese Sluijters-Rompa, 62, a retiree who came to this western Dutch village with her husband for a day of icy fun.

"This is the Netherlands at its prettiest," she said, elegantly dressed in a cream jacket, her eyes shining under a white bonnet. "We come to skate, to get out, but above all it is about being one with nature, the silence."
"It is a little piece of heaven."

All around her, dozens of other skaters, their cheeks red as apples and their caps pulled low over their eyes, flashed by -- their torsos slightly bent, hands crossed behind their backs, eyes looking straight ahead.

"It is perfect," sighed one happy skater.

Skating is traditionally the most popular winter pastime in the Netherlands, with thousands of Dutch leaping at the chance this winter to tie up their skates and glide across frozen lakes and canals.

Profiting from longest stretch of sub-freezing temperatures in 12 years, sports stores in the Netherlands are selling out of skates.

At Kinderdijk, which has the Netherlands' largest concentration of windmills, many skaters opt for Frisians -- a sharp blade mounted in wood, afixed to a normal shoe with thin leather straps.

Others prefer elegant white skating boots. But most favour so-called Norwegian skates, with the blade extending beyond the toe and heel.

The 19 windmills bordering the "Children's Dike" that gives Kinderdijk its name are classified a world heritage site by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Jaap de Vries, who lives in one of the windmills, on Friday mingled with skaters in yellow wooden clogs.

"I will be 70 next year, I am too old to skate," he told AFP. "But that doesn't mean I can't have my strolls in the sun."

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