What another nice morning, waking up in a dry and cozy bed. We set off by 8am onto the empty streets of Amsterdam on a Saturday morning.
We made good progress the first 50km to The Hague, which had architecturally nice buildings set along a canal. We had our waffles in a covered arcade, taking cover from the drizzle.
It then rained for most of the rest of the day. It wasn’t very pleasant. We caught a little ferry from Maassluis to Rozenburg and met a nice Dutch lady bike tourer who shared tea from a thermos with us.
Around 4pm we came across a windmill with its door open and a couple people there. I asked if we could see inside it and the very friendly Dutch miller welcomed us in and gave us a half hour tour. He showed us how to spin the mill to face the wind. We went inside and he showed us all three levels – 1 a where the ground flour comes out, 2 – where the wheat is inserted (and where the grinding take places), and 3 – the actual wheels and cogs that concert the spinning motion on a vertical plane to horizontal plane. It was pretty fascinating, and cool to see such a cool piece of engineering from 1719 (the first windmills in the Netherlands were built around the 1400s. It was also interesting to see that the principal use of harnessing energy centuries ago was for the milking of wheat into flour.
We continued on, reaching the coast and following the long straight paths connecting the islands of the northern coastline. This was late in the day and we were feeling pretty tired, with this being one of our longest days so far. We eventually stopped at a secluded beach, just before sunset. We had rice with pasta sauce, chorizo, and Camembert along with a stroopwafel for dessert.
