The countryside

Go time travelling across the ocean floor

The area around Kinderdijk is a great place to spend your day exploring South Holland’s natural and cultural treasures. These lands are part of the best cycling and hiking trails in the Netherlands, and rightly so! From the mills and pumping stations, you can take a bike and enjoy a ride along dykes and across polders, straight through the Green Heart region and its romantic villages, historical fortified towns, and right into the vibrant inner cities of Dordrecht and Rotterdam. Take your walking boots or bicycle straight across the seabed, and travel back in time – all rolled into one relaxing day out in the country!

A perfect start for your day trip

Since the Dutch landscape has the benefit of having so many landmarks so close to each other, Kinderdijk makes for a perfect starting point to plan your day trips across the wider area. The opposite also holds: plenty of great routes lead to Kinderdijk, whether from the might historical Drechtsteden cities scattered across the Randstad area, the bustle of Rotterdam’s urban life, the orchards of the Betuwe region, or the unique natural environment of the Biesbosch marshlands near Dordrecht. Any way you look at it, the Kinderdijk windmills make a great start or arrival for the best local day trips along the natural and cultural splendour this completely unique Dutch landscape has to offer!

Meet the Dutch from up close by bike, on foot, or by boat!

Enjoy our historic Dutch countryside

In and around Kinderdijk, a wealth of adventure and natural wonder await you in the peaceful polder countryside. Wide-open green spaces offer amazing vistas set beneath impressive Dutch skies, as the wind whispers in the reeds along canals and waterways, and the rustle of willow branches and poplar leaves guides the breeze that keeps the mills in motion.

BACKGROUND

Marked by the water

In truth, the whole area around Kinderdijk should be listed as World Heritage. The windmills and pumps are just a part in a much greater whole, in which water is the connecting thread that binds the villages, cities, and polders of Alblasserwaard together. You can see it all around as you cycle or walk around the region. You will notice, for instance, that many of the old villages were built on so-called ‘donken’; low hills dotting the flat polder landscape. Back when the water ruled these lands, people could flee to the safety of the donken in times of flooding. Cemeteries, for instance, were established on these donken, to prevent the water from simply washing the deceased out to sea…

By bike, boat, or walking boots

The Alblasserwaard and the wider Kinderdijk region look back on a long and rich history. Here, you can feel, see, and taste what Holland was like centuries ago. Grab a bike, hop on a boat, or put on your walking boots to enjoy a lovely day in the sweeping polderland countryside, because Kinderdijk is a great starting point for the most astonishing day trips for all ages.

Cycling routes and hiking trails through windmill country

Every landmark is close to the next, well-connected by excellent cycling routes and hiking trails, as well as by regular infrastructure that makes all the gems of the Dutch landscape easily accessible by car, bus, train, and even by Waterbus and Water Taxi. This is water’s land; this is windmill country – this is the Netherlands at its best, ready to be discovered by the rest of the world!