Windmill 'De Westerveer', Spanbroek

'Westerveer' = 'Westerveyr'
'Spanbroek' = 'Spanbrook' with the really long 'oo'; not the American version.

Built in 1873 to drain and maintain the Westerveer polder.

Weather forecasters and cloud radar predicted consistently sunny weather in the western half of the country, particularly in the north, so that was where the hunt was going to take place.  Summertime... and the hunting is easy...

The Westerveer was built in 1873.  This huge area north of AMS is part of the province of Noord Holland but is called West Friesland.  East Friesland is on the other side of the huge IJsselmeer ('eye-cell-meyr'), the inland lake that used to be the even larger Zuiderzee ('Cider-zey') before the 33-km. Afsluitdike closed it in and changed it into a freshwater lake.  It is the Westfriese Molens foundation that owns the windmill today.

Left rather late in the afternoon (lazy Saturday me!) when I noticed that it wasn't going to turn cloudy at all.  An accident on the usual A27 led the GPS advise to use the longer, western route.  There was slight traffic on the A4 because the A12 to Utrecht was shut, but no standing still, and after a while everything eased up.  I'm discovering motorway connections I never knew before.  Handy for future hunting.

It's a private road leading to the homestead next to the mill, so I found a temporary parking spot along the road, one of those gated entrances leading to the fields which was apparently hardly used, and went the rest of the way on foot, to be greeted upon my arrival at the homestead by two alert labradors who sounded the alarm, but their barks turned friendly and I had to remind myself that I wasn't out to burglarize their home, which would have been suicide anyway because the owners were in.  Took some profile shots, see Extra 1.

Could not hang around, but one labrador guard decided he could not trust my presence, so he did hang around me, almost all the way while I walked the long path back to the main road.  Now when I have something like that, it kind of eggs me on to look for another way to get to my objective, and I found it in the form of another entrance to the fields, this time on the other side of the canal.  200 meters down the road to the left and it was open, with no 'Off Limits' sign, and no access to the suspicious doggies.  The walk was a lot longer, though, and the uneven polder terrein turned my ankle a handful of times, although I did not sprain it, plus there was a fair number of squelchy parts and the whole place was strewn with duck-goose-swan poop.  Ten cautious minutes later and then I was able to take about thirty odd shots of the windmill and its pretty setting.  More than worth it!  The whole operation did take a bit more than half an hour.  Sorry, doggies, but the Ellaphant will always find a way.

Extra 2 -- Shot on my way to the open gate.

Back long after AW had finished his dinner (I did warn him that I would be gone for some hours), so I had mine, and we watched Belgium win.

Thankful for a beautiful post-Solstice day, in more ways than one!