Windmill

The windmills around Lisbon are nothing short of a wonder. At some point almost every hill had one. A 1960 survey counted 11 000, wind and water mills. Many of them can still be seen when travelling around this area. Traditionally round and made of stone they had a pointed wooden roof that could rotate carrying the structure that supported the hemp sails, to better catch the wind.
Today while some are rundown and keep only the rounded shape of the stone structure or have been abandoned not to long ago and are now showing some signs of decay (like this one), others have been completely recovered and are even grinding cereal.
This one has everything in place to be working but the sails are out (they are only put in place when needed). We can see the clay pots the millers attached to the lines so they know by the sound the wind makes going through them, if the wheels are turning. The pots are placed in a way that each windmill has it´s own special sound that resemble a soft howl and depending on it´s nuances, the miller knows, for instance, if the sails have to be taken down altogether because of the danger of tearing up or adjusted or turned in another direction.