You may remember that we who live in Gorinchem, NL, have a sister city across the Mervede river from us. You can actually see their windmill and church from our side of the river.
It so happens the windmill has now become our favorite windmill of them all, not only because of it's educational factor (we plan to take all our guests there from this day forward!) but because it has every flour we'd ever want for Astrid's bread-making machine, as well as corn meal for my baking needs.
Woudrichem is just adorable. There's no other way to put it.
With 14+K people, it's just the "sight rize."
We parked near the St. Martinus Reformed Church, built in the 15th-16th centuries.
From where we parked, the church was straight ahead and the windmill was off in the field to our right.
This is the Nooit Gedagt (Never Thought Of) grain mill from 1995.
The original mill from 1662 was destroyed during WWII.
It's the only Dutch mill with all 8 sides completely covered in brick.
Here it is up-close and personal with its Victor van Marseille gable stone.
Now, come inside and enjoy!
You could spend a long time in the ground-floor shop, checking everything out.
But go upstairs to the first floor....
...and that's where the guys package up and store their stock.
It's the biggest grain-mill operation I've yet seen to date here in the Netherlands.
Next floor up (3rd, if you're counting) is where you can walk out onto the platform.
(Room for more storage, too.)
From that level you can inspect the wheel that operates the sails,
and look out over the lovely town and harbor. It really is adorable.
(And that duck's nest is from 1531 mm away, as an FYI.)
One more floor up, the top floor, is where the gears are being turned by the outside sails.
It's so fun to see a mill in operation, so I decided to record it for you:
If you view this on your browser, you'll get more info,
but the passing shadow you see is from the rotating sails outside.
Dutch mills are run by wind power, NOT by electricity.
And that was that!
We took special note of the bunker café below the windmill, which wasn't yet open that day.
We'll have to try it out the next time we go.
We bought the flours we wanted to buy and got a few extra goodies thrown in.
And you wonder why I love this country so much???
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
By the way, did you miss me last week? HA! Well, I've been making a Blurb book of my 98 Vision & Verb posts. It's done except for final proofs and edits. Once I hit the Publish button, I'll see if I can upload it to my sidebar, so you can see it there. I'll pick up my copy in Atlanta during our October annual trip.
