Saturday, March 31, 2018 ~ Kinderdijk Windmills

Saturday, March 31, 2018 ~ Kinderdijk Windmills

It was an early morning stroll through this UNESCO World Heritage Site.  A series of windmills line the canal standing at the ready to pump the water into the canal and eventually back to the sea.  

Kinderdijk (kinder dike) is a village in the Netherlands province known as South Holland about 9 miles from Rotterdam.  It is situated in a polder, or a low-lying tract of land reclaimed from a body of water by the construction of dikes roughly parallel to the shoreline followed by draining the area in between the dikes and the natural coast.  Kinderdijk is located at the confluence of the Noord and Lek rivers.  The system of nineteen windmills was built around 1740, and is the largest concentration of old windmills in the Netherlands.  They were designated a UNCESCO World Heritage Site in 1997.

This map shows the location of Kinderdijk

We left our ship at 8:30 a.m. under the watchful eyes of our guide for the day, a lovely retired psychiatric nurse who spends her days with English and French speaking tourists.  We had a leisurely stroll from the ship along one side of the canal.  

She took us into a workshop to show us models of different parts of the windmill while helping us to understand how they work.  I think what I found most endearing was the amount of pride she had in her people for figuring out the engineering of the windmills.

The skies were slightly overcast, but the clouds were giving way to sun as we began our morning with more and more sunshine.  The reflections along the canal fascinated me, and I couldn't help but take shot after shot to capture the beauty.

Our last stop before returning to the ship was at a working windmill.  The miller himself was at the door to welcome us into his home.  Our guide, Marje, told us that families with as many as 18 children lived in these windmills -- hard to imagine.  The pictures below are of the family "living room" which house the stove for cooking, a table, and even a bed in an alcove.  It was a rather short bed, and Marje explained that in those days people slept sitting up because to lie down was the "death position."

The shot above is, I think, my favorite reflection shot of the day, taken as we walked back to the ship with the sun shining brightly.  Back on the ship, we spent the rest of the morning in the lounge as our ship casted off and began the twenty-two hour sail to our next stop: Cologne in Germany.