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In the Netherlands a hard freeze is an excuse for wild revelry. With much of the country beneath sea-level and floods only kept back by hard work on the dykes and ditches, ice can lock up the encroaching water for a few days, a week, maybe even longer. So, temporarily freed from the responsibility of keeping the waters at bay, the Dutch strap on their skates and take to the frozen canals and lakes, which cross the countryside like a network of glass-smooth highways. And in the northern province of Friesland they bring their horses onto the ice with them.

Ice and skating are an integral part of Dutch culture. In a good freeze, the Netherlands are whirled back five centuries to a world familiar from the paintings of Brueghel and Averkamp. Bundled up against the cold, the Dutch swoop and slide through the stark winter landscape. Children push chairs ahead of themselves to keep balance. Couples waltz along the canals, arm-in-arm. Teams race each other from town to town or windmill to windmill on tours that can be anything up to two hundred kilometres in length. Skating for the Dutch is the equivalent of Guinness and traditional music for the Irish - a symbol of who they are and where they've come from.

So, whilst the rest of the horse world greets frost and ice by laying deeper beds, cutting back feed and giving their nags a holiday, the Friesan horse enthusiasts screw in half-inch ice-studs, harness-up to sleighs and head into the frozen wastes.

During the Netherlands' last hard freeze I stood, stamping my feet, on an expanse of ice at Makkum, just inland from the Friesan shore of the Ijsselmeer. Despite the sun shining in the clear azure sky, a knifing wind was pulling the temperature down towards minus ten centigrade. I was part of a small group of spectators cheering on the runners in a hastily organised programme of belslydjeije - 'bell sleigh' - races. Ice fever was burning and enthusiasts had marked out a straight track, a few hundred meters long, on the ice. Twenty or so turn-outs were warming-up, surreally gliding past a backdrop of yachts frozen into the ice.

My guide to the arcane traditions of Friesian sleigh racing was Esther Liano. She was grooming for local whip, Joop Veenstra, who was driving his pure-bred Friesian, 'Yannos.' At a shade under 16 hands the gelding was average height for the breed, and, naturally, he was jet black. It was the horse's first outing on ice and he was having to learn fast. "He's still young and doesn't really trust himself." Esther explained as she checked the gelding's four-per-shoe studs, "The sleighs are difficult to control, both for the horse and the driver...especially when you put on the brakes - then the sleigh swings all over the place and the horse has to be very steady to hold it straight."

There was a blast from the starter's horn and two horses raced neck and neck down the track in a clattering extended trot. The drivers perched on the back of their sleighs, astride a wooden seat. Their clog-shod feet rode the runners, ready to stamp a metal spike into the ice to brake at the end of the run.

The two sleighs crossed the finish line, the harness bells clinking and chiming, and the sleigh-runners hissing over the ice. The whips stamped down hard on the brake-spikes and there was a shower of glittering ice shards as the sleighs slewed to a halt. "Look at the drivers' feet," Esther said, pointing down, "They stuff their clogs with straw for insulation. And the married men wear blue socks, and the unmarried men wear white socks, which is a useful thing for a Friesan girl to know."

The horses racing were all pure-bred Friesians. Though the type is described in accounts of Roman warfare in Britain in 150 AD, and it's suggested that they were ridden by the Normans in the Battle of Hastings, the breed only took on its defining qualities during the Spanish-Dutch wars of the early 17th century. Andaluce blood was bred into the original Dutch stock, giving the collected head carriage, the high action and the flowing mane and tail of the modern breed. With their combination of impressive bearing and steady temperament, Friesians became famous as the mounts of the kings of Europe, and then as carriage horses. And being black they were the most appropriate for drawing hearses at funerals. That blackness is paramount in the breeds make-up and no spot of white, save perhaps the smallest of stars, is found on a pure Friesian. Indeed the Dutch differentiate between different shades of black - a glossy ebony being the ideal, and 'brown-black' the least favoured.

Over the centuries the fortunes of the pure-bred Friesian horse were tied to the needs of Friesland's hard working farmers. With changes in agricultural practises, the breed's popularity waned and in 1913 the studbook, (established in 1879), had only three stallions and no progeny following. Realising what they were in danger of losing, the Friesian people took a typically thorough approach to regenerating the breed. Over the coming decades studs were established and rigorous testing procedures put in place for entry into the stud book. Stallions were not only judged on conformation and colour, but also on temperament and gaits as well as under saddle and in harness. Mares and foals, too, were assessed equally rigorously with marks split 40:60 between conformation and movement.

At the belslydjeije racing there was similar attention to detail and tradition. Many of the heavily decorated sleighs had been passed down through the generations. "Most of them are a hundred years old or more, and they are never for sale...the harness is the same." Esther laughed, "Look at the harness - all that brass and ornament. It's awful to clean." Heavy leather bands studded with the dozens of bells which give belslydjeijen their name, trailed from each side of the pads and from them hung long red tassels which just brushed the ice. Bridles were embroidered with strings of white cowrie shells. Horse-hair plumes, dyed red and white, bobbed atop head pieces and terrets. The sleighs had their red and black woodwork inlaid with brass filigree, and each bore a small brass horse statuette at the front, like a ship's figurehead.

Esther and I were watching Joop circling 'Yannos' at the start of his first race. The horse had got used to the ice and his high action in trot was bringing each studded hoof squarely down on the ice with a sharp crack and a diamond spray of frost. Horses ran in twos and there were penalties if any broke pace. Innumerable re-matches, second chances and a complicated system of semi-finals and finals ensured each turn-out the maximum number of runs.

There was also a self-imposed handicapping system; some drivers raced with their wife or sweetheart as passenger. Like the men, the women wore traditional Friesan Sunday best. This ran to bonnets, shawls and voluminous petticoat-bolstered skirts. The costume was of such bulk that few women opted to squeeze themselves into the sleighs' tiny cockpits but instead they balanced, like surfers, on one of the runners, hanging on with one hand whilst keeping the other free to hold down their headgear.

The flag dropped and 'Yannos' and his challenger stormed down the track. The sleighs ran as sweet as sports cars behind the horses, skimming over the ice between the lines of cheering spectators. 'Yannos' took the race by a head and Esther gave an exultant yell, the sound leaving her mouth on ball of frozen breathe like a cartoon speech bubble. Back at the start the next pair were already preparing to race. With the sun dipping low there were only a few brief hours to get in as much racing as possible. Who knew when there would be ice again?

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