The Netherlands is famous for its windmills, boasting over 1000 mills throughout the country. Kinderdijk, 15km south of Rotterdam is host to 19 of these mills, originally built to drain the water from the Alblasserwaard Polders, areas of land lying below sea level and prone to flooding.
Although the windmills’ job is now performed by a modern screw turbine, the windmills have been preserved as part of the Dutch heritage, being added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1997.
The cold Dutch winters bring out graceful troops of ice skaters, weaving gentle lines across the deep frozen canals as the stocky forms of the mills disappear into the snow whipped fog.