For the last part of our excellent road-trip, it was off to Zeeland (where New Zealand comes from) to see the Delta Works. Another UNESCO site, here we celebrate human engineering I suppose. The Netherlands has a very long coastline, and it would be even longer without the Delta Works. What the Delta Works does, is to shorten the coastline. Here’s a picture (CC:BY Classical Geographer)
The Netherlands came up with a risk profile that they were prepared to agree to, and then enshrined that in law and put aside the cash to keep the flood defences maintained. Different parts of the country have differing levels of risk associated depending on whether you’re in a flood zone. That is, some places will be purposefully flooded if the water gets to certain levels.
Anyway, a magnificent feat of engineering, but it sure had ecological effects, as you can imagine (places which were seawater becoming fresh etc.)
This was put in place because of the huge floods of 1953 when 1,836 people died in The Netherlands (307 in England)
We visited an excellent museum of the disaster (partly designed by Eveline du Perron, a friend of Maaike’s)
And then it was back to Posterholt and the end of the road trip. I had a really excellent time travelling around and getting to see a bit more of The Netherlands and spending time with Maaike’s mum and dad :)
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