lightcycle
Nomad
Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/228.html
It's a strange thing to glance at your GPS and see negative numbers for your elevation. But that's what you get when you're riding through the Netherlands. Or is it Holland? Dutchland?
We've pulled ourselves away from the Belgian Haven of Eva and Thomas' home and rode out into the warming European spring. The sun is shining and the sky is blue and for the first time in a while, it feels like we're finally ahead of the weather instead of being chased away by it.
Riding past dams, dikes and levees of the Delta Works project
Being very flat, the Netherlands is not really a motorcycle destination. About 25% of Holland is below sea-level and more than half of the country is in danger of being flooded! There's been a long history of flood-control here, with the first dikes being built in the 9th century. For scenic reasons, we were advised to ride along the coast and through the Delta Works project in the south-west part of the country. It's basically a high-tech version of those first dikes, also helping to reclaim vast areas of land from the encroaching North Sea.
I was surprised to learn that this land reclamation is quite critical because the Netherlands is one of the most densely populated countries in the world by land mass. There are more people squeezed in here per square km than in India!
Accelerating the population is similar to accelerating a motorcycle. Except that you clump the Dutch instead...
There are 35 people who live in this one windmill alone
Like other countries in this part of the world, I only knew a little bit about the Netherlands. I knew about the little boy who stuck his finger in the dike, and that everyone here smokes pot and wears wooden clogs. I didn't know why this place was also called Holland and why the official language was called Dutch, and not Hollandaise, or Netherlang.
I did know that there are a lot of windmills in the Netherlands.
Hanging out with the windmills at Kinderdijk
Speaking of population density, the densest concentration of windmills is in the town of Kinderdijk, so we rode there to see them up close. I always thought windmills were used to grind grain or something similar. Boy, was I mistaken.
At Kinderdijk, 7 meters below sealevel, all sorts of flood-management techniques have been implemented throughout the centuries: dikes, sluices, etc., however these all proved ineffective against the ever-rising waters. In the 1700s nineteen windmills were constructed to help pump water away from the low-lying areas in Kinderdijk. A hundred years later, these windmills were supplanted by newer-technology steam pumps which were then converted to electrically powered ones in the 1900s.
Today, the nineteen windmills at Kinderdijk have been restored and mainly serve as a tourist attraction. They've been designated as a UNESCO site, so once again, we are on the Gringo Trail in Europe.
These guys don't seem to mind all this water
Windmill Cruise
It's a strange thing to glance at your GPS and see negative numbers for your elevation. But that's what you get when you're riding through the Netherlands. Or is it Holland? Dutchland?
We've pulled ourselves away from the Belgian Haven of Eva and Thomas' home and rode out into the warming European spring. The sun is shining and the sky is blue and for the first time in a while, it feels like we're finally ahead of the weather instead of being chased away by it.
Riding past dams, dikes and levees of the Delta Works project
Being very flat, the Netherlands is not really a motorcycle destination. About 25% of Holland is below sea-level and more than half of the country is in danger of being flooded! There's been a long history of flood-control here, with the first dikes being built in the 9th century. For scenic reasons, we were advised to ride along the coast and through the Delta Works project in the south-west part of the country. It's basically a high-tech version of those first dikes, also helping to reclaim vast areas of land from the encroaching North Sea.
I was surprised to learn that this land reclamation is quite critical because the Netherlands is one of the most densely populated countries in the world by land mass. There are more people squeezed in here per square km than in India!
Accelerating the population is similar to accelerating a motorcycle. Except that you clump the Dutch instead...
There are 35 people who live in this one windmill alone
Like other countries in this part of the world, I only knew a little bit about the Netherlands. I knew about the little boy who stuck his finger in the dike, and that everyone here smokes pot and wears wooden clogs. I didn't know why this place was also called Holland and why the official language was called Dutch, and not Hollandaise, or Netherlang.
I did know that there are a lot of windmills in the Netherlands.
Hanging out with the windmills at Kinderdijk
Speaking of population density, the densest concentration of windmills is in the town of Kinderdijk, so we rode there to see them up close. I always thought windmills were used to grind grain or something similar. Boy, was I mistaken.
At Kinderdijk, 7 meters below sealevel, all sorts of flood-management techniques have been implemented throughout the centuries: dikes, sluices, etc., however these all proved ineffective against the ever-rising waters. In the 1700s nineteen windmills were constructed to help pump water away from the low-lying areas in Kinderdijk. A hundred years later, these windmills were supplanted by newer-technology steam pumps which were then converted to electrically powered ones in the 1900s.
Today, the nineteen windmills at Kinderdijk have been restored and mainly serve as a tourist attraction. They've been designated as a UNESCO site, so once again, we are on the Gringo Trail in Europe.
These guys don't seem to mind all this water
Windmill Cruise
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