Saturday 13 April
We woke up at 5-ish as the ship was docking at Rotterdam. Apparently, there were no berths free at Kinderdijk, so rather than mooring there, we would be taken by coach, meaning an earlier start. Alison read the blog that Peter had completed after she had fallen asleep the previous night, and muttered about the spelling mistakes.
Meanwhile Peter put on some clothes and ventured to the tea and coffee machine clutching an Earl Grey teabag, returning with two cups of tea.
We showered and went along for breakfast about 7:45 but Alison resisted the temptation to have some champagne with her fruit salad.
We returned to reception to collect our boarding cards and noted that it was about 2 degrees outside with a predicted maximum of 5.
We were separated into small tour groups: those on bicycles, those walking and we who would be taking the “vintage barge”.
We arrived at Kinderdijk and walked along to board the barge, which, although the hull was of great age, had been modernised to the extent that the superstructure was all new and the propulsion was by battery driven electric motors (with no rudder).
We proceeded along the canal up to a bridge that was raised by the helmsman pressing a button and lowered again by the same means when we had passed through.
We reached the oldest mill, built in the 1600’s, but since renovated and converted into a museum. We were introduced to the custodian, an 8th generation miller, who was very knowledgeable and explained the workings of the mill and the fact that the original mill families lived in the mill, kept animals, tended a garden and derived their income from the farmers whose low lying lands (polders) they drained and protected from the floods.
The windmills were replaces by steam powered pumps and later by diesel and electric pumps. We returned by barge and then visited the steam pump museum.
We returned to the boat for our mandatory evacuation drill, followed by lunch and a description of the remaining tours.
Afterwards we had a presentation by the captain and senior management, followed by the captain’s reception.
A bracing walk around the deck and some pictures from the previous few days displayed on the TV screen completed the day.
See a brief video of the day:
Windmills