Kinderdijk, South Holland, NetherlandsThis morning I was planning to take the ferry with my rental bike to Kinderdijk. This is a UNESCO site with 19 windmills and can be explored by bike,
In the summer you can rent bikes at Kinderdijk but as this was off season I had to bring my bike with me
Route 21 Ferry from Rotterdam Erasmus Bridge stop will goto Kinderdijk and you can bring your bike on board for free.
You have to check the schedules as the first ferry leaves 10am and the next would have been 11.40am wasting more of the day so I needed to be on the 10am. This is also why I had to keep my bike overnight as the bike rental store opens 10am as well and said they would not make exceptions, and that if I needed the bike for the 10am ferry I would have to rent it overnight from the day before.
The ferry website (www.waterbus.nl) said that you can only buy tickets online. There were no machines at the ferry station. However on board they were taking card payments from those without tickets. I had already bought a ticket online for 9.50 Euros
The ferry moves at high speed and passengers are not allowed to leave the cabin to go outdoors.
It passes by many of the landmarks and you can see the modernist architecture of The Netherlands
There is a strange Noah's Ark design.
Google says - Johan's Ark is a Noah's Ark-themed barge in Dordrecht, Netherlands, which was built by the Dutch building contractor, carpenter and creationist Johan Huibers. It is a full-scale interpretation of the biblical Ark, featuring animal models, including cows, penguins, a crocodile, and a giraffe.
Arriving at Kinderdijk I had about 90 mins before the next ferry.
It was handy to have my bike as it would have been a lot of walking. I checked the nearby map to orient myself and my biking path
Some cruises had let off and there were big walking groups here along with other cyclists.
Entrance to the site is free except for the Windmill museums which were extra that I did not need to do.
The weather was quite chilly and it was stating to cloud over as more overcast weather moved in
Biking I was able to more quite quickly. The windmills end but the path will go on for kms so I just turned back to take more photos.
I had about 40 mins to kill before the next ferry and it was more chilly as the colder weather moved in
I had planned well for the first 10am ferry to arrive as now the weather was becoming quite bad for people arriving on the next ferry from Rotterdam.
The return trip I could hardly see anything with all the mist and fog so had I been arriving now from Rotterdam the trip could have been a write off.
See also Vlog of visit (10 mins) - https://youtu.be/zhkwpknmAiI
2025-05-23