'Klunen' is a Frisian word. The Frisian Dictionary of 1900 uses two comments:

1. To walk over land with the skates still put on, on places where the ice (rink) is thin or where the ice-rink doesn't correspondent with the route.

2. To pull through the mud. Here is talk of 'kluynje'. The first time the verb 'klunen' was used, was in 1909.

At present the verb 'klunen' has got a different meaning. If somebody says 'klunen' he means: "To walk by skate over land, planks, straw etc." The points of kluning pre-eminently are between Bolsward and Franeker. In 1997 there were seven out of the eleven points of kluning between Bolsward and Franeker. That's about 64 %.

In 1997 some coaches were ready to transport the recreative tour-skaters 3 km. in case the ice was too thin. The ice under the bridges turned out to be not strong enough, to carry the thousends of Eleven City-skaters. The coaches should carry the skaters from one part of the town to another part of the town, where the ice was strong enough. Three km 'klunen' is too long for 'kluning'. This measure wasn't necessary. The ice was strong enough, so the coaches didn't need to transport the skaters.

In English ther is no translation for 'klunen'. There's a substantive that's derived of 'klunen', namely a 'kluning point': One of a dozen passages where skaters must scramble overland from one canal to another or across wooden bridges to bypass stretches of thin ice. (from Time, March 1985)