Typical Dutch autumn weather greeted us this morning, overcast with patchy rain and wind. Today we drove up to the Zaansche Molenstad where there is still a few windmills that do various tasks. The first one was an oil mill that produced oil from peanuts. The cogs inside the were huge and the whole windmill performed several tasks at once.

The second windmill was a timber mill which could cut the big logs of wood up into smaller planks. I really enjoyed seeing how the old Dutch windmills worked and Maxine's Dutch pancakes tasted great.

Mum and Maxine loved watching the clogs being made and the original 3 hour process now only takes five minutes.

By Ben
(Ben is a frequent contributor to our blog).