When you see windmills and canals, you can guess that you are in the Netherlands, especially here at Kinderdijk, which has 19 old windmills, the largest collection in the country.
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Two of these windmills are open to the public, where you can go inside to look around, where you'll discover it was a house with several rooms inside. People used to live in there, the millers. In fact, there are still people living in most of these windmills. And when you go inside, you can speak to the miller, who will tell you all about how these mills operate.
The function of the windmills at Kinderdijk was to pump water out of the farmlands because this area is seven feet below sea level. The farmland is called “polder” and the area is surrounded by dikes that function like dams to prevent the nearby river from flooding the fields. The windmills remove any water that accumulates during frequent rainstorms, especially in the wintertime when water levels could rise to flood the fields and ruin the crops.
It's a UNESCO World Heritage site. The Kinderdijk World Heritage Foundation works to preserve the windmills and conserve the area for future generations. The foundation also operates a visitor center on the site, including a café, souvenir shop and information services.
Admission to the windmill area is free because it's a designated bicycle route. However, to go inside a windmill or ride on a boat you need to buy a ticket, which you can purchase at the information center or buy it ahead of time on their website. At the information office they can show on a map the alignment of the windmills and the route that you normally take when you are visiting. On the map you can see the green farm fields called polder and the 19 windmills, of which six are part of that normal visit Itinerary.
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You can ride the convenient boat service as part of the entry ticket. Every 40 minutes, another boat comes by. Or you can just walk -- it's about a 20-minute walk from one end of the windmills to the other, also a nice way to see the place. There is beautiful scenery all around, with lush fields, sheep, cows, horses, and many windmills. It's really phenomenal.
During the visit you realize there is more to see here than just the windmill. There's a backyard garden for flowers and vegetables. After all, back in the old days, the miller families who lived here had to grow a lot of their own food. There are animals in the corral. There's a beautiful big canal with boats in it. Kinderdijk is a small village.
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Guides demonstrate how the windmill was adjusted to account for the varying speeds of winds. Each one of the four blades has a canvas sail that can be opened or closed, much like a sailboat. In low wind, the sail
You can go inside the Blokweer Windmill, the oldest here, built in 1630. The other windmills at Kinderdijk were built between 1738 and 1740, but this one is a century older. The windmill guides are professional, licensed millers who actually live in a windmill, and they explain all about the different rooms and how the windmill functions.
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You’ll see the living room, the place where the miller family lived. And there is a bedroom, and in the corner of the bed cabinet, a little cradle for the baby. And they shut the door to keep the baby warm. And with a wood-burning stove to get it warm in winter, and dry the laundry.
These mills still pump sometimes, when it's raining. They need a drainage system to pump to get water outside of the polder district. Otherwise, it's too much water, and it would be underwater. They pump into the canal and then it just flows from the canal to the river, which regulates water levels to keep it dry and safe. But in the summertime, it's not necessary don't pump. In summertime all the millers were working with the farmers in the fields, and the mills were not in operation. An important time for the windmills was October until April, due to storms and the rainy weather.
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The miller explained about life in the mill.
“It's my job here operating this one. We are living below sea level, so we need a system, when it's raining, to get the rainfall outside. We cannot live here without a draining system. The more rainfall we have, the more hours we are pumping. All those mills for built for draining.
“It's comfortable living in a windmill. I love the history of the windmills. And I like so much to live inside the mill. Yeah, freedom, and quiet. I love a mill in full operation. When I come home and the wind blows, we set sail and we pull the brake free. And we start pumping. When it's important for farmers, we can use it. We still use it for draining. Wind power. Power of nature.”
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Most of the drainage is done now by two diesel pumping stations, but occasionally, if there is a very heavy rainstorm, it overwhelms those mechanical pumps and these historic windmills are utilized to assist in the drainage. So they're not just UNESCO World Heritage Sites or museum pieces. These are functioning windmills still plugged into the hydraulic system here, which enables the farmlands to be very productive even though they are below sea level.
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The other windmill open to the public is the Nederwaard Museum Mill, free to look at from the walkway. But you do need a ticket to go past the gateway and walk inside the windmill.
The windmill can rotate to face the wind for maximum efficiency. However, the entire structure does not have to rotate, just the top portion, unlike the earlier Dutch windmills where the entire building had to be turned around. My timing for the visit was good because a group was just leaving, so I was able to have a nice conversation with the miller who works there and serves as a guide.
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He was a little busy doing some cleanup but then generously spent some time with me.
“They build the windmills to keep the land dry. The polder is 38,000 acres. And with the windmills, we took it dry. And the first thing what we do here is we make a dike. There is a dike around the whole place. And then we start to create canals and to build windmills. And after that, we pump the water out. This windmill was built in 1738.
“We have two windmills that are open for the public for visit. And you know the other ones, people still live there. There is one family in one mill, and they live there the whole year round. Well, you can only live in a windmill where you have a diploma. Now, you want to volunteer, there’s a waiting list, but you can only come on the waiting list when you have a diploma. You have to be a miller. But I came here, more than 42 years here without a diploma. And it's all experience, what I do. Yeah. But I learned also from the old generation. No free rent, we have to pay rent. Only the wind and only the wind and the sun is free.
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“Pumping water. Otherwise, we're underwater, below sea level. Two meters fifty below sea level. And the lowest point of Holland is near Rotterdam, six meters fifty below. So one third of the country is below sea level.
“Also with the global warming, the sea level is rising and also the river level. But the polder behind the dike, the polder, the ground is like peat. And when you pump water out, it's going to sink.”
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Inside, it's a multi-level vertical structure with some ladders to help you get around. When you reach the living room and kitchen with its wood burning stove, and then get to the bedroom, you feel like you're in a regular house and not in some kind of a giant structure with large cross blades spinning around.
While inside, you're welcome to climb up to the various levels and get right to the top, where you can see the gear mechanisms in operation. These wooden gears transferred energy within the windmill, conveying power from the rotary motion of the sails to mechanical devices for pumping water. Operating these complicated windmills requires a lot of skill. The Dutch are very, hardworking, very clever.
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When done with your visit, take the canal boat back to the visitor center. This 20-minute ride covers a route passing nine of the scenic windmills, a very pleasant way to see them.The boat can carry about 50 people with seating outdoors as well as inside.
Windmills have been important to the Netherlands for more than 500 years. Along with pumping out water from the fields below sea level, they were also used for other purposes, especially grinding grain, and mechanical functions like sawing wood, pressing oil, making paper, grinding spices, textile production, and grinding tobacco leaves for smoking and showing. They also used position of the blades to send signals, such as announcing birth, or special events.
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Curiously, the windmills could occasionally be used to bring water onto farm fields in times of drought when water was needed for the crops. Because there was often a reservoir of water that was pumped out of the fields and held just in case it would be needed for future irrigation. But most commonly, it was pumping water out of the low-lying land, maintaining the stability of the farmland.
That same process created new land by pushing back the sea. It expanded the size of the country by 26 percent, which is the area currently below sea level.
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When you consider the importance of modern wind turbines for generating electricity, and the danger of rising sea levels, we can learn a lot from the Dutch. They have preserved 1200 of these old windmills. But during the peak of usage, during the 18th and 19th centuries, there were 10,000 windmills throughout the country. And in the rest of Europe there was an estimated 200,000 windmills.
The name Kinderdijk means Children's Dike, and a legend claims that it got that name because after a giant flood in the year 1421, a baby’s cradle was floating away, but it was rescued by a cat. You might call it a fantasy, or a traditional folk story. So we get Children's Dike.
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It's quite likely you'll see a tour group from a river cruise ship, because Kinderdijk is the largest collection of windmills in the country, making this a popular stop in the itinerary on a boat tour of the Netherlands. They're walking back to the visitor center. It's a nice 20-minute stroll, but when you purchase your own ticket as an independent traveler, the boat ride is included at no extra charge.
That brings you back to the visitor center and completes the visit. They have a lovely terrace, a café, a place to buy tickets and get information. You can learn a lot more about the area from the Kinderdijk World Heritage website, which is loaded with descriptions, maps, photos, and links for purchasing tickets and tours.
Many of the workers here are among the 250 volunteers who do an outstanding job every day, serving as millers, hosts, hostesses, guides, cashiers, skippers, maintenance and shop volunteers, all local people, with regional knowledge. They are the ones keeping this World Heritage Site functioning.
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Kinderdijk was officially designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997, keeping it safe for future generations to visit and experience. In the UNESCO declaration, they explained that Kinderdijk is an outstanding human-made landscape that bears powerful testimony to human ingenuity and fortitude over nearly a millennium in draining and protecting an area, by the development and application of hydraulic technology.
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The landscape is striking in its juxtaposition of horizontal features represented by the canals, dikes and fields with the vertical rhythm of the windmills. There is no drainage network of this kind, or of comparable antiquity anywhere else in the Netherlands or in the world.
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The easiest way to get to Kinderdijk is from Rotterdam, the nearest big city. It's a 40-minute scenic ride costing just 5 euro, boarding in downtown Rotterdam next to Erasmus Bridge. The boats are not just for tourists but play an important role in public transportation, getting people around, and bicycles ride free. The visitor greatly benefits from this kind of publicly financed ferry, because the fare all the way to Kinderdijk is only 5 euro, a low-cost, high quality scenic ride. Passing under the remarkable Erasmus Bridge, you'll also have excellent views of Rotterdam skyline as you cruise right through the heart of the city. You get the best highlights of what you would find on the commercial boat cruise that costs 18 euro. Or you could pay even more for a fancy dinner cruise.
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However, this first leg of the boat ride does not take you all the way to Kinderdijk. You have to change boats at the Riderkerk stop, it only takes a few minutes with that synchronized boat schedule, gaining more views of the always interesting riverboat traffic, continuing with the final leg over to Kinderdijk itself. From the dock, you walk 300 meters to the information center to begin your visit.
Here is a bonus. Another destination that you can reach from Kinderdijk, the city of Dordrecht, is another boat ride away, leaving from the same dock. This time it will take a little longer, an hour and 20 minutes, bringing you to one of the oldest cities in the Netherlands. It's very easy to get from Kinderdijk to Dordrecht on this comfortable, relaxing, scenic boat ride. You take a short ferry across the river, then you change boats with a coordinated schedule and get on the fast boat to Dordrecht. The current price is just 12 euro per person. It's the best way to travel from Kinderdijk to Dordrecht, because there are no trains for that route. You’ll find interesting river scenes with bridges and cargo boats along the way.
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Here's a brief summary of what you'll see in Dordrecht. We do have a separate webpage all about it that you can find in our site. Dordrecht has all those features that you want to enjoy in a typical old historic Dutch city, including an extensive pedestrian zone with a mix of new and old buildings and plenty of places to eat, shop and just walk around, yet quiet enough, you'll see a few cats in the back alleys. When done with your day trip, you can take a direct train back to Rotterdam just 18 minutes away.
Check the schedule on Waterbus.nl
