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Sep 21, 2007 11:38 PM GMT

By: RikerVP

RikerVP

Joined:

08/29/2007

Last Login:

10/06/2008

Traveling to Kinderdijk

The Netherlands is famous for its wooden shoes, tulips, bicycles and windmills. Today there are still more than one thousand wind mills in exsistance.

Nowhere in the world you will find as many windmills as near (the Dutch village) Kinderdijk a small village just south of Rotterdam. Around 1740 era no less than 19 sturdy mills were built here situated on a beautiful setting of ponds and little waterways. These have been well preserved to the present day.

The mills drain the excess water from the Alblasserwaard polders which are situated below sea-level after which the water is sluiced back into the river Lek.The large powerful mill sails serve to transmit the force of the wind on to large paddle-wheels which scoop up the water.

(all photos: Riker Video Productions)

In todays world power-driven pumping diesel engines do the job, including one of the largest water screw pumping-station in Europe. The foundation "Wereld Erfgoed Kinderdijk" maintains and preserves the windmills in Kinderdijk. The preservation is not limited to the windmills themselves, but also covers the area in which the windmills are situated.

The foundation makes use of funds from the government and the members of the foundation each contribute to the cost of maintenance. Additional sponsoring should take care of reducing the backlog of repairs. In 1997 the mills of Kinderdijk were put on the World Heritage List of UNESCO.

Today Ina and Ken (Riker) visited these beautifuls wind mills and took in some fantastic sites you'll ever see and toured the river, viewed the mills from the water. What a fantastic day it was to say the least.
We palyed tourist for the most part of this week.

A view of yesterday

While inside we looked into the past and what it was like to live and work in a windmill, these are truly a work of art just being in one is amazing. The bed stays were people slept are really quite small in comparison to today regular sized beds.

Photo by Ina

(artifacts used in days gone by)

After the boat tour if the river we sat down for a spell and enjoyed a koffie and watched the birds as they came to steal food, here Ina is seen feeding the birds as they came in to check us out.

When the birds had had enough we went into the gift shop and took a look around and found some interesting things for sale.. low and behold... we found some wooden shoes.

(photo by Ina)

As the day grew late, we ended our day here at Kinderdijk at the main gift shop and headed home. We enjoyed our day here with a great appreciation for the old world charms and history left for us to explore and we'll be back here again real soon of that I am sure.