Windmill 'De Twee Gebroeders', Aalburg

'Twee Gebroeders' sounds like 'Tway GeBROOduhrs' and means 'Two Brothers'.
The municipality is actually Wijk-en-Aalburg ('Wike', 'Aalburg'), and the windmill is in the Aalburg part of the deal, on a high dike along the Maas River.  Come to think of it, there are a lot of them along the Maas and I've managed to shoot a large number of them already.

Fabulous weather.  The dike was quite narrow.  Dual carriageway, but it didn't feel like that, so there are points where one car has to stop and wait for the oncoming vehicle to pass first.  Had to shoot the windmill at close quarters.  Two steps backward would have meant either rolling down the other side of the dike or trespassing into someone's front yard.  That last one isn't as problematic as it sounds but I do prefer to respect property boundaries, especially when they're so obvious.

Apologies for the lampposts.  Frankly, I did not expect them.  In recent shots of this mill, at least those I've seen, there were none yet.  Had the mill been facing in the opposite direction, I could have avoided at least the nearest one.  The windmill was already turning by the time I could spot it from the main road.  Because of the narrow dike and the fact that there wasn't any real parking space on the dike itself, ended up parking more than half a kilometer away, next to the church at the bottom of the dike.  On the short walk to and from the spot, I could hear the mechanism humming.  Managed a minute-long video.  Will be back in this area soon as there's another mill a little further away.

AW had been gardening when I left but was done by the time I got back.  The rest of the day went as usual.  In the course of research, I stumbled upon a family who had completely perished during the North Sea Storm floods of the night of 01 Feb 1953.  What a dramatic event that must have been, when all the dikes in Zeeland ('Zayland') and South Holland could no longer hold.  The Dutch government had spent all the available money rebuilding after the war and there was none left to maintain the dikes, resulting in a high number of casualties, both human and animal.  'Never again!' said our politicians, and that was the start of the massive Delta Plan that became the Delta Project, when the finest skills of Dutch engineering were sharpened and tested, and new innovative dike and dam-building machines were created, resulting in the architecturally beautiful, functional, state-of-the-art storm surge barriers we have today, a true source of Dutch pride, especially as roughly 50% of the country is below sea level.  They are the spiritual descendants of these windmills -- 'keep the water out, save our country, save our people'.  Of course, you can include 'save our money' there as well.

Speaking of which, finished updating the bookkeeping tonight as well.  The situation is far from rosy, but our financial dikes have not broken yet.  Very thankful about that but vigilance now needed.  COVID-19 has been the perfect excuse not to travel anywhere.