It's our last full day in The Netherlands, and we spent it mostly on the road travelling around the Rhine river delta, the southern parts of the country. The city of Rotterdam is one of the largest ports in the world, and all that shipping traffic passes by the "Hook of Holland" which is basically the north side of the main channel to Rotterdam.
We parked and had a coffee, and walked down to where the ships pass by.
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| Some of the fifty or more rental beach houses on the sand, at the Hook of Holland. |
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| "Holland Zuid" means Holland South. The "Blauwe Vlag" (Blue Flag) testifies to the water quality. |
Dutch is the language closest to English (Sue told me). It looks quite different but much of it is recognizable when said aloud. Even "Zuid" does sound a bit like "South" when said.
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| Beware of being swept off your feet by the wake from ships passing by! |
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| A ship passing through the massive Maeslantkering gates. |
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| One of the 220 metre long, 7,000 tonne gates, parked up on dry land waiting for the next storm. |
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| Some people to help you appreciate how big this is. |
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| A photo (of a poster) showing the gates closed. |
The Maeslantkering gates are one of the largest moving structures in the world, and protect the port of Rotterdam from flooding. The two gates normally rest on dry land, but can be floated out into the channel and then sunk onto the sea floor to provide a seal. They are operated automatically by a computer system which monitors the sea level and the weather, and only have to be closed about once every five years.
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| We crossed the channel on a car ferry. |
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| A boat passing through the locks near Stellendam. The locks separate the sea from the inland waters. |
Near Stellendam, and further south, the Dutch have completely sealed off the land from the sea with huge causeways and enormous gates which can be used to manage the water levels and prevent flooding of the land. They closely monitor water levels throughout the whole country, and have a system of dykes designed to limit flooding to one area if there is a problem. They have to contend with threats from both sea storm surges and from flood waters coming down the Rhine from Germany and beyond. The "North Sea Flood" of 1953 in which a storm caused widespread flooding and killed 1836 people is still fresh in many minds and they have built these enormous sea defense systems to prevent it ever happening again.
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| The sea wall near Stellendam. |
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| There are thousands of these across The Netherlands. |
The Netherlands has thousands of wind turbines, including large wind farms in the sea. However the majority of their energy still comes from coal and gas power stations. The challenge is that wind farms take perhaps 100 times the area of land that the equivalent gas power plant requires.
