Last Day in the Netherlands

On Sunday, 9/28, a shocking realization – tomorrow is our last full day in Holland. Somehow we really settled in, but the end is coming. Tuesday morning we take off for Barcelona.

So on Sunday afternoon, our last hurrah, very satisfactory - an archaeology boat trip into a nature preserve just north of our town of Wormerveer, at the Poelboerderij Wormer (which means, pool bordering Wormer town). We had lots of company, to our surprise. 

Piet Kleig, the district archaeologist 

All kinds of things I never thought about before, such as:

The dunes that protect Holland from the North Sea have been here for thousands of years. They started as barrier islands, like along the US East Coast. The first settlers built on the dunes, which were pretty high, and hunted in the peaty lowlands between the dunes and the hills far to the east.

That land wasn’t underwater, it was peat. Peat comes from years of grass and weeds growing, dying, rotting, growing again. Miles and miles and miles of peat - all above water, but damp.

When they started farming, the early people wanted that good land, and began to drain the water off by digging canals perpendicular to the waterways, like in this wooden map of our local preserve. The new land is called a polder. You can see they came at it from mainly three sides. Pump the water, and your cows won't have wet feet. 

This was when the Romans were about, and a trade developed for beef and leather. The Romans never conquered the area, though - they were forced to stop at the Rhine River. Stories about that, too. But trade? Yes. Just last weekend, in this very polder, a farmer plowing for next year turned up a Roman coin. Piet, the archaeologist, was jazzed in a restrained kind of way.

Problem: draining the peat dries it out, and it shrinks. Then it settles and sinks beneath the water. Simply put, this is why Holland is below sea-level. There are a few other factors, but this one is most striking. The more you dry the peat, the lower it subsides, letting the water in again. So you pump out the new water, and that keeps the land dry, but it keeps going down. Sort of Sisyphean - you solve a problem, but the solution makes it worse, so you do it again - over and over. Our archaeologist shrugged - what can you do?

This is one of many, many small mills that drain water

Later I found a great power point presentation on this: http://earth.esa.int/workshops/fringe07/participants/559/pres_559_carocuenca.pdf

This is the oldest remaining windmill in the area, from the 1720s

The lake we were on is only a few inches deep. Below that the mud begins, at first just a thickening of the water, deeper actually mud, but no solid bottom is apparent. 

Dutch traditional boats have sideboards because the water is so shallow. There are deeper channels though – we passed some sailboats with keels. 

Lots of people on the water, this pleasant warm fall day. The Dutch seem to like water much of the time. Might as well.

from Nancy, 9/29/14