Heavy rain again through the night but once we are up it eases off. We are all ready to leave around 10:15. As we drive away from the camperstop some fields are waterlogged.

The motorway is very busy, long convoys of trucks and streams of cars as we make the hour long drive to Alblasserdam and check in to the waterside parking area.

After a quick coffee we take the short walk to the waterbus station and watch barges steaming past while we wait for our boat to arrive 15 minutes later. Once we and a number of bikes have wheeled aboard it sets off at quite a lick, passing barges as we go. A few minutes later we are at De Shand where we change to another boat for the remainder of our excursion to Kinderdijk.

We cross the road to the Kinderdijk Museum entrance, thronging with people, and queue for our tickets just ahead of an irate, impatient and rude tour guide who seems to think her party should have priority admission.

Kinderdijk is a UNESCO World Heritage site featuring 19 polder windmills which still contribute to the continual drainage of the Ablasserwaard polder.

Apart from the throngs of visitors, the scene has remained unchanged for decades. A large area of reed is split by a wide drainage canal which is flanked by rows of picture-book windmills, some with sails turning. The mills are beautifully preserved with their thatch-brown walls, black beret rooves and lattice propellers. Around the top they have prettily painted detailing a bit like the castle and roses decoration on canal barges. Beside each mill is set of wooden sluice gates and small garden. Ducks and tern float and swoop along the waterway which, at the margin, is thick with water lily leaves.

As we walk along the bank and around the bend in the canal different vistas of 4 to 8 mills present themselves with the groups of mills juxtaposed against the skyline.

Back at the entrance we stop to look at a modern pumping arrangement; 2 diesel engines of about 1500 hp driving 3 archimedes screws perhaps 2 metres in diameter and 7 metres long.

Rather than take the waterbus back we decide to walk the 4km along the cycle route, much of it alongside the canal. We pass the IHC shipyard where various modules of ships are being fabricated, and past what looks, at first glance, to be an old P&O ferry, but is actually a concrete office or apartment complex.

When we return to the van the fairground on the adjacent quay is in full swing with loud music blasting out.

After two nights of near silence [rain and thunder apart] tonight will be noisy. But at least the sun is shining again.