Gouda City

Gouda is famous for it's Gouda cheese, smoking pipes and it's 15Th century city hall. The town takes it's name from the Van Der Goude family, who built a fortified castle alongside the banks of the Gouwe River, from which the family took it's name. Gouda's fabulous array of historic churches and other buildings makes it a very popular day trip destination. Gary, Coby and myself, grab our pushbikes and set of to Gouda ( about 15 to 20 kms) from Nieuwerkerk a/d IJssel. We stop and have a mugachino and appeltaart (Dutch speciality) with Coby, before it is time for her to return home once again. Coby has been extremely busy helping Stella with the renovations at her place. In the 13TH century, the Gouwe was connected to the Oude Rijn (Old Rhine) by means of a canal and it's mouth at the Hollandse IJssel was developed into a harbour. Castle Gouda was built to protect this harbour. This shipping route was used for the trade between Flanders and France with Holland and the Baltic Sea. In 1272 Floris V, Count of Holland, granted city rights to Gouda, which by then had become an important location. In 1577 the demolition of castle Gouda began. In 1855, the railway Gouda- Utrecht began to operate. In the beginning of the 20TH century, large scale development began, extending the city beyond its moats. From 1940 on, back filling of the city moats and canals began, but because of protests from city dwellers and revised policies of city planners, Gouda did not continue back filling moats and canals, now considered historically valuable.

The Endless Battle

For over two millenia the dutch have been fighting against floods and reclaiming land from the sea. The sea has been driven back, but at what cost? Countless lives and homes have been lost to the sea and the rivers. The Dutch know that every square meter of soil came at a high cost, yet giving up is simply not an option. We know how the Dutch keep the waters at bay nowadays, but how did this endless battle begin? It started with a terp (or wierde) this is an artificial hill, made to create a safe haven at high tide. The first terps were built around 500BC and ended with the coming of the dike somewhere around 1200. A dike is an artificial earthen wall, constructed as a defense or as a boundary. The best known form of dike is a construction built along the edge of a body of water, to prevent it from flooding onto an adjacent lowland. Dikes are mainly found along the sea, where dunes are not strong enough and along rivers for protection against high floods, along lakes or polders. Dikes have also been built for the purpose of empoldering. A polder is a low-lying tract of land that forms an artificial hydrological entity, enclosed by embankments known as dikes. Some need drainage by pumps to prevent the water table within it from rising too high. Some can be drained by opening sluices at low tide or pumping mills (windmills). In Europe windmills were developed in the middle ages. The earliest mills were probably grinding mills. They were mounted on city walls and could not be turned into the wind. With further development mills became versatile in windy regions for all kinds of industry, most notably grain grinding mills, sawmills, threshing and pumping mills. The pumping mills allowed the drainage of the Dutch wetlands, to claim new land (polders), by continuously pumping water to the rivers, land below sea level could be created. To claim ever more land it became necessary to build a series of mills (molengang, mill pace). Each mill pumps water into a higher reservoir, with the last mill pumping it out to the river. In the 18th century several molendriegangen (3 mills) and molenviergangen (4 mills) were built, the largest preserved mill pace in kinderdijk was awarded world heritage status in 1997. Gary and I paid a visit there and visited some of the working mills and saw them in action.

Delta Works (Maeslantkering)

In the North Sea flood of 1953, breaks in the dikes and seawalls killed 1835 people and forced the evacuation of 70.000 more, 10.000 animals drowned and 4.500 buildings were destroyed. To prevent such a tragedy from happening again, an ambitious flood defense system was conceived and deployed, called the Deltawerken. This project was intended to improve the safety of the lower areas of the Netherlands against severe storms and flooding. Since more than 1 third of the nations land lies below sea level, this was no simple task. Dunes along the entire seashore were raised by as much as 5 meters, while the Islands in Zeeland province were joined together by dams and other large-scale constructions to shorten the coastline. The most sophisticated and famous of these dams is the Oosterscheldekering, which can be opened and closed to keep the sea at bay while preserving the salt water river delta for wildlife and the fishing industry. Gary and I visit the less known, but not less impressive Maeslantkering storm surge barrier near the port of Rotterdam. This storm surge barrier had to be located in the Nieuwe Waterway. This played an important role in the planning stage of construction as this waterway is the main route to the port of Rotterdam. Therefore a barrier like the Dutch Oosterscheldekering and the Thames barrier could not be constructed, as such a barrier would block the shipping route. The barrier that was built is connected to a self operating computer system which is linked to weather and sea level data. Under normal weather conditions the 2 doors themselves are well protected in their dry docks and a 360 meter wide gap in the waterway gives ships enough space without any inconvenience, but when a storm surge of 3.00 m above normal sea level is anticipated in Rotterdam, the barrier will automatically close. Four hours before the actual closing procedure will begin, in and out going ships are warned. Two hours before, the traffic in the Nieuwe waterway will come to a standstill, thirty minutes before, the dry docks that contain the gates are flooded. After this the gates start to float and two so called loco mobiles move the gates towards each other.