clog blog: Kom naar de Molens

This weekend we were practising our Don Quixote moves and went windmill hunting!!

Kinderdijk is a village in Alblasserwaard in South Holland about 15km East of Rotterdam and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997. There are 19 windmills here, the original function of which was to pump water out of the Alblasserwaard Polder to reduce the risk of flooding. The mills are still functional but modern equipment has since equipment taken over the job of pumping the water. All but two or three of the 19 windmills were running over the weekend.

The windmills at Kinderdijk operate on the Archimedes’ screw principle and have two main architectural designs. There are round windmills and those with a hexagonal base; both kinds have a thatched top. There is one hollow-post mill which uses a water wheel to scoop water from the lower dijk into the higher river which takes the water away. Hollow-post mills has a very different architecture to Archimedes’ screw mills. The one at Kinderdijk is painted black and looks a bit spider-like. This windmill burnt down in the 1990’s and has since been rebuilt.

Considering Kinderdijk is not that far from us, it took quite long to get there! It took about two hours for us to get to Kinderdijk which included a 45 min wait for bus number 90… For a popular tourist attraction you would think they would have a bus that goes there more often than once an hour! We thought there would be more activities on being National Windmill Day and all but apart from the one windmill that is always open for tourists only one other windmill was open, black hollow-post mill.

From far away windmills look slow and lethargic but up close they actually move quite fast! It was quite cool being up close to the hollow-post mill. It seems obvious but the speed of the sails is directly related to the wind speed and the speed of the water wheel is directly related to the speed of the sails. It was quite fun to watch how the sails and wheel sped up or slowed down when the wind was gusting or being calm (a bit science-nerdy, I know!).

You don’t quite realise how big the sails are until you are standing what feels like almost underneath the mill. It is actually quite dangerous at the speeds they are going. The direction of the wind on Saturday meant that you had to walk around the mill on the water side to get inside. They had cordoned off the unsafe areas around the mill but it was still pretty scary walking past the sails on the safe side! Don Quixote must have been very brave to attack windmills in operation with only his lance!

It was really kewl being able to go inside the hollow-post mill and see the wooden mechanism inside. Windmills are actually quite noisy. The cloth of the sails flaps in the wind and the mechanism itself is very creaky which make them feel quite eerie inside. The windmills are made so that the ‘molenaar’ and his family can live inside. I hope they lock the sails into the ‘off’ position at night! I suppose you would get used to the sound.

There isn’t much to see at Kinderdik apart from the windmills, but we really enjoyed walking around the mills and learning more about Dutch heritage. Although the sun was shining, it was quite fresh in the wind but it was nice to be outside for the day. We did see lots of baby ducks though! And families with teenager ducks.

On Sunday Justin played cricket again, the first game of the season for his own side (VOC). They played an away game and lost. Justin’s bowling figures were 1/45 off 8 overs but a catch was dropped during his bowling spell. The opposition made 285/5 after 40 overs and VOC were 191 all out. It’s still early in the season so I’m sure the team will still gel together.

Bron tried out a new church (The Scottish International Church) on Sunday, had a quick stroll through the park (looking different to last time with leafy green trees and no ice in the canals!) and then went to Schiedam in search of more windmills!

There are seven windmills at Schiedam, five of which are located along the bend of a canal. One of these five, De Noord, is famous for being the tallest windmill in the world. The windmills at Schiedam were used to grind wheat into flour and not for pumping water like those at Kinderdijk. They are still functional, although I’m not sure if they are still used for grinding wheat, and five of the six that I saw were working on Sunday.

Only one windmill was open, De Kameel, which looks like it was a new windmill or at least had been moved from somewhere else. It is very roomy inside with about 4 floors before you get to the balcony where the sails are. Each floor has been converted into a conference type room. The bottom floor has a glass floor over a boat that was used for transport in the canals of the city and to distribute flour.

We enjoyed our weekend of being Don Quixote wannabe’s and highly recommend checking out windmills when you visit the Netherlands.

No real plans for this week. Justin is going to Amsterdam for meetings on Tuesday and has a home cricket game on Sunday which Bron might watch some of. We need to go back to Ikea to get a CD rack/display cabinet at some point. Might happen this weekend, might not.

Hope you are all well! Have a good week!