Alblasserdam, Kinderdijk, Ammerstol, Bleskensgraaf

There used to be 150 windmills in the Alblasserwaard. Nowadays you will have to do it with 'only' 53, of which 48 are watermills. You will see that the water in the ditches is often much deeper on one side than on the other side. When all these mills were still there, the mills pumped the water one meter higher to the low basins of the Nederwaard and Overwaard. Nowadays, the pumping stations do this. Just past junction 9 you see the Peilmolen. This is not indicated on our route as a departure point, but you will cycle past it. The water gauge miller was in the deepest part of the innkeeper. When the water came too high and had to be ground, he hung a lamp in the sail, which made the mill a kind of lighthouse. The signal was sent by all the millers to Kinderdijk. This is how the millers communicated throughout the Alblasserwaard!