Windmill 'De Swaen', Nieuw Beijerland

'Swaen' = 'Swan'
'Beijerland' = 'BAY-ur-lant'
There's a Zuid-Beijerland, where there's a windmill I've already shot, and there's an 'Oud-Beijerland' ('OWD'-Beijerland), which used to have a mill, and this is Nieuw-Beijerland.  I sometimes wonder how many windmills have been destroyed by natural disasters or negligence or been simply demolished through the centuries.  They are expensive to maintain, and if a municipality determines that a particular mill is of no further use (machines are cheaper and work faster and the touristic value is not so high) and the money can be allocated to something more urgent and relevant, unless a sponsor steps forward or a foundation is formed to finance the mill, it will have to go.  Those that are no more can no longer be found in the modern database, of course, so research will need to be done in the online archives of each individual town and village, something I won't even start with.

This one was built in 1703 and is privately owned.  So private that there's a fence around the whole parcel of land.  That was okay with me as long as I could take shots.  It was facing the sun but I had to wait a while before the sun came out.  It is also next to the road on the dike, so I was able to take some side shots.  The sunlight made a huge difference, so huge that I even scrapped many of the shots I had made before the light actually fell on it.  Not that I felt any real warmth, though.  It was close to freezing and I did not have my gloves on.

The extra is of the sunset, shot at 80 kph on A29 on the way back.  Traffic was slow on the Haringvliet bridge due to road works, so I drove behind a truck and managed to take seven or eight shots.  All together, not a bad harvest today.

Back home, the usual activities, although more gaming than writing.  Got an email from Randstad with non-teaching vacancies in our area, where I'd regularly have to work in shifts, occasionally at night.  Hm.