Kinderdijk is one of the most extraordinary feats of water engineering in the world. It’s a landscape that’s shaped not by geography – but by centuries of human determination to hold back the sea.

On this self-guided walking tour, you’ll discover how Dutch ingenuity transformed a flood-prone polder into a UNESCO World Heritage site, and how the millers who kept it dry still live and work here today.

You’ll walk along the Lekdijk, a dike protecting around a million people from the river Lek, and descend past modern pumping stations into the polder – roughly a metre and a half below sea level.

You’ll encounter two rows of windmills – round brick mills on one side and lighter octagonal wooden ones on the other – each reflecting the separate water boards that once governed this divided landscape. You’ll hear about the Hoek family, millers who’ve lived at Kinderdijk since the 1740s and whose descendants still operate the mills today.