The Windmills and Polders of Kinderdijk

“What’s that kid doing with his finger…”? Sometimes fairytales do come true. It (could have) all started here, in Kinderdijk (“children’s dike”), named possibly by the legend around St. Elizabeth’s Flood in 1421 where a local boy inspected and helped save the dike — or as some say because much of the dike building work was done using child labor. You decide.

The village of Kinderdijk has been shaped by Rhine Delta waters and is most known for its 19 beautifully preserved (and working) 18th century windmills. It’s surrounded by low lying polders – tracts of land reclaimed from the sea by the power of the windmills and enclosed by the dikes. The town was given UNESCO World Heritage Site status in 1997.

In order to get an in-depth and up close look at the area, and the mills we donned some bike helmets (the locals wouldn’t be caught dead in them) and E-bikes to “power” ride along the dikes and polders. The e-bikes (if you’ve never been on one) are quite a trip. As you push down on the pedal you can feel the electric motor kick in and literally propel you along with very little manual pressure. You can control the power, but we were careful not to put it into the “Turbo” setting.

We stopped at a working “demonstration” windmill to get a better understanding of how how the mills work and the families that inhabit and run them. There is a long wait list for people who would like to live in and operate one of these mills. Rent is free with the obligation to keep the mill working. “Owning” the windmill is forever, with most inhabitants passing it down from generation to generation of the same family. Our name on the wait list will probably stay on the list for millennia. This windmill keeper also tended goats and built her shed out of the willows that grow along the dikes.

Living and sleeping arrangements are quite compact, having to work around the intricate mechanisms of the windmill itself. Some of the families have to be careful not to become too large because of the tiny shared beds of the owners. Since the blades of the mill have to be turned toward the wind (a whole story in itself), one of the two entry doors — the one in front of the spinning blades — must be carefully locked. You don’t have to imagine what would happen if you forget and walk out the wrong door. The speed of the blade, sometimes more than 90 mph at the tip, has killed many a keeper. You also have to make sure the kids don’t get too close to the exposed wooden gears in the center of the living space. Uhm. Maybe we’ll take our names off the waiting list….

It was time to hop back on the e-bikes and pedal along the beautiful Kinderdijk countryside admiring the stunning wildflowers, enjoying the unusually warm and dry weather.

Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel
Like a snowball down a mountain, or a carnival balloon
Like a carousel that’s turning running rings around the moon
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind!

— Noel Harrison

Back on the Kvasir, we arrived in Enkhuizen at about 10 pm making ready to hop on our e-bikes again tomorrow to explore more of the Dutch countryside and the beautiful town of Hoorn….