This is the statue of Hendrik Lorentz,
the physicist who contributed towards the engineering of the dike and the pumping stations to evacuate the water. His calculations for the tidal flows and forces made the feat possible. In fact, the entire project was completed early and was less troublesome than expected. He’s looking inland rather than out to sea, which I thought was a little strange?

The statue is located where the dike was sealed by the last bucket of till. Till is a form of clay dredged from the local waterways, used to coat the sand used in the construction on the Dike. The top layer of grass is kept by sheep, which do a better job of compacting than cattle. So it says anyway!

What an amazing technical achievement to see built in your lifetime as a local eh?

Talking of technical, for some reason my email account has been disabled and I can’t unlock it with my phone. It means I have to update the blog by web page online, which is a real pain! At least it’s near the end of the trip, and hopefully not long before I can get to a ‘real’ computer. They also have WiFi at the ferry port 🙂