You can’t go to the Netherlands without seeing windmills. Or canals. The windmills of Kinderdijk, an easy day trip from Rotterdam, are part of a classic Dutch landscape of water, dykes and wind power. Kinderdijk is also a place to learn about the long struggle between the people, their land, and the sea.
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Kinderdijk, A UNESCO World Heritage Site
The whole story of this part of The Netherlands is based around attempts to reclaim the land from the sea. Kinderdijk is a part of that story, with a canal and 19 windmills. These were once part of a complex system of water management.
Over the years more modern methods of managing the land and the water have developed, and windmills have gradually disappeared from the landscape. However the windmills of Kinderdijk have been retained so that visitors can learn the history of the area. Kinderdijk gained UNESCO World Heritage status in 1997, making it one of 10 UNESCO sites in the Netherlands.
Reclaiming The Land
Because the land is fertile, this area has been inhabited for thousands of years. However the land is also flat, and the inhabitants had to find a way of stopping the sea from flooding their fields and their homes. They built canals and dikes to drain the water, but needed to control the water levels in the canals and rivers. The result was a system of pumps, reservoirs and locks, all powered by windmills. The first windmills were built in the 13th century, and remained in use until the 20th century.
The name Kinderdijk literally means “children’s dike”. The local legend is that the name originates from a particularly vigourous inundation in 1421, known as Saint Elisabeth’s Flood. A child was supposedly found to have survived in a crib bobbing up and down in the water, kept upright by a cat swimming alongside!
The Museum Windmills
Two of the Kinderdijk windmills are now open as museums, explaining why land reclamation was necessary and how it was managed. The Nederwaard Museum Mill has a fascinating slideshow of black and white pictures showing the story of Kinderdijk’s water management from the Middle Ages to the present day. And the Blokweer Windmill Museum is an opportunity to explore what life for a windmill keeper and their family might have been like in the 1950s. It seems to have been a self sufficient existence, with each family having a small plot of land to grow food and keep chickens.
Although there is no charge to visit the canal and to walk past the historic windmills, you will need a ticket to go in the museum mills. And be warned that there are steep narrow steps inside the buildings.
A Walk Along The Canal
Kinderdijk isn’t just about history: it is also a place for a peaceful country walk. Admittedly it can be crowded at the start of the path (a cruise ship had just turned up when I arrived), but it gets much quieter as you walk further on. Once I got past the second windmill-museum it was just me and some cyclists. Bicycles are popular here, and I even saw a man on a penny-farthing!
The path along the canal goes through fertile peatland. The grass is full of wild flowers and there are bog irises and waterlilies. I saw nesting birds, dragonflies, and the shells of fresh water pearl mussels.
Visiting Kinderdijk
The easiest way to get to Kinderdijk from Rotterdam is to take a boat from the Erasmus Bridge (payment on board by cash). Some boats go directly to Kinderdijk, or you can take the waterbus to Ridderkerk, and then go on the local ferry across the water to Kinderdijk.
You can take your bike on the boat, or rent a bike from the souvenir shop at Kinderdijk. If you don’t want to walk or cycle, you could opt for a guided tour of the site, which includes the museum mills, visit to the Wisboom Pumping Station, and a boat tour around Kinderdijk village.
The UNESCO World Heritage Visitor Center has a café and a gift shop. But if you want something for substantial I recommend you do as I did, and take a boat ride to Ridderkerk, where you can enjoy a leisurely snack or meal at the Paviljoen. Here you can watch the river traffic going by until it is time to catch the waterbus back to Rotterdam.
3 thoughts on “The Windmills Of Kinderdijk: A Day Trip From Rotterdam”
How lovely Karen. The wind mills make it special. The bike paths are nothing to sneeze at either. This will be one of my fave aspects of visiting Holland; being able to bike effortlessly around much of the country, enjoying some sweet views and fine cardio too.
I am so doing this when we get to the Netherlands next spring. You make it look absolutely gorgeous! I had no idea what a penny-farthing was until now, but that would make the scene really feel as if you had stepped into the past!
I was just in Kinderdijk in May — it was a stop on our Rhine river cruise. Loved the history and the beauty of those old windmills. I would really like to do a bike tour there sometime — that would be so much fun (especially with all that flat land).