As far as I can remember, I never published anything in Worldmappin. First time for everything. After being with HIVE (and whatever was before HIVE) for 9 years, my first shall be something special. A place I visited very recently with my best friend and here son. An old castle, 750 years old, with important historical meaning, close to my town of residence:
It wasn't the castle that made us head our way to the village of Muiden, but rather a special project they started:
The kid - 5,5 years of age - LOVES LEGO. We couldn't resist, or better said, we had no option anymore after the kid learned about this project. Penultimate Saturday - December 20th - the project was launched. Pushed almost every day before that, we simply had to go ASAP. A few hours after launch, it was time for us to lay the first stones. Yes, you read it right, we all started building. The result: you'll encounter a few still images a bit further down this post.
Heading our way towards the castle. The parking lot was just to the south of the village. A spot I preferred much to the one closer to the castle, since we had the chance to see a bit of the village as well. Obviously, a super old village. One that was built over time after the castle was constructed. My friend never been to this place, therefore even more a must to not only jump into the castle and the LEGO thingy.
Above you see one of the main streets of the village. Stretched along a canal. In the distant past, small cargo boats used it, pulled by horses and all. These days, this canal is used by pleasure boats and yachts. A little further - don't have a picture - an old shipyard is located. Well, some of it is still available, but it needed to make place for luxurious apartments. From the remaining, a yacht repair service station is created, operated by a high-end yacht dealer; Yachts costing kinda like half to one million Euro per meter.
As you can see in the still images above, the day was grey, grey and again grey. A bit unfortunate, but we will make it back to the castle, hopefully on a somewhat sunnier day. They - my friend and her son - don't know yet, but I'll be going to bring them back before the LEGO project ends. To see for ourself in real life if whatever we build is still intact, as well as to see what the whole project has become. We need to be early on the last day or so, to allow us to (re)build whatever we want to. Perhaps everything we've put together will be destroyed by then. I mean: How cool will it be when our touch to the whole thing is present at the project end?
The castle!
As most historical spots have these days, a map of the whole thing, including its gardens.
The insect to the left is a dragonfly, I guess. Though they live in waters such as the moat around the Muiderslot castle, I have no idea why they put this sculpture there. The Internet tells me - as older photographs show me - the moat doesn't have a permanent sculpture. We will 'see' this 'little' one fly away at some point in time, I suppose.
To the right, the inner courtyard of the castle. The tent is for later. A musical group - a choir - will bring their tunes to the public in the evening after sunset. They will take shelter below the tent, for when the pagan god 'Thor' decides to slam his hammer on the clouds above us.
Here we are: The reason for us to be at Muiderslot! The object to the front, by our hands. The kid built the leftmost part of the thing. My friend the middle part and the right part. And I, the construction to the back of the facade on the right; A massive but small construction with a fairytale-like use. The ability to walk around from bottom to top and back with a change of gravity between bottom and top. Like it is a little globe, a little planet. I guess we need to go back for a better picture. Another reason why I shall energise the others to join in the revisit.
To the left the walk up in one of the towers of the castle, the oldest tower, the one build 750 years ago. See the description a few images down below; It explains the history. To the right, a more modern route down, in the same tower.
The left most photo: View of the village 'Muiden', from the top of the tower. To the left the 'harbour' of the village. To the right the repair service station for yachts. The right photos show the inside of the tower. I was surprised that these look very much like an old windmill. The horizontal construction is wood, while I would've imagined stone, as we can see often in castles. The roof is also made of wood. Perhaps something to do with keeping the total weight as low as possible. This part of the Netherlands - as most part of the country is - doesn't have stone underground, but sand and mud. Nothing super sturdy.
When trying to capture the inside of the castle, after the LEGO room closed for the day, I knew I was taking way too few pictures. The reason for this is that kid and his mother already waited for me, all the time. While she is usually the one taking pictures, this time she decided not to, or a very very few. I still need to ask her whether she liked the castle. Perhaps she did, but the kid may not. A little later I also realised the kid being hungry and all. Since he is impatient, anything can happen in such a stage. Perhaps all the reasons from mum and kid to 'run' through the beautifully restored rooms with much to see, from the old stuff they used back in the days, to tons of paintings covering most of the walls.
The images above show the main room (left) and the kitchen (right).
On our way out I was able to shoot the above still images. I do love the deep dark blue sky in combination with the castle. I wished I had the same colour when shooting the castle from the distance. surely, I could've post-process these, but I do not like to post-process any photographs. Or at least, as little as possible. Something to do with the art of photography. Back in the analogue days, post-processing was not possible. Surely, some post-processing was possible when being in the doka, but nothing like changing parts of the colours and such.
The left one shows a hint of the garden in front of the castle. We didn't took the time to walk through them. Something to do next time! To the right, I had to take these cute little lamps. It snowed inside. Should've taken a video. The other two show the lock used by the boats and ships passing from what we call these days 'IJselmeer' - a big (partially) artificial lake - and the canal that leads more inland, as well as to other rivers we have in our country. Due to tides, the lock is needed to prevent the land around the canal from being flooded.
Quite a bit of time ago, we closed the IJsselmeer from the sea around our country. Before it was called Zuiderzee (Southern Sea) and was used a lot by ships bringing goods from all over the world since the 1400s/1500s. We closed this sea for various reasons, including our ability to control tides. Of course the closing is of the sea isn't a simple dyke, but one we can open whenever we want to, which happens multiple times a day when the tide of the sea allows this. Also, locks were constructed to allow ships in/out of the IJsselmeer from/to the sea outside.
A closer view of the Muiden lock.
This one I post-processed. It was my digital XMAS card I send family and friends. I included that one in here to not only wish you - the reader - belated Xmas wishes, but also to learn of a little after I publish this post I am able to discover this post by using eg Google Lens. Due to the text, it shall be easier to find, I would imagine. But time will tell. First I need to press the 'publish' button. Then wait for some time. And only then I can test.
Again I went way into the 1000 words. I thought, I shall keep it brief, but for that to happen, I need some teacher. At the same time, I don't like posts with just photographs. I like to read about the photographs when I see those made and posted by others. But whatever I like, you may not like. Well, I tried to show the story line also with the order of the still image itself.
When you made it this far, thanks much for your attention.
Do you like castles and visiting them?
When you do, which are your recommendations?
In case you have published them on HIVE or any other spot in the Internet, please share those down here in the comment section.
