Dover

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Last weekend, Karen and I went to Dover. We left on Friday night after I got off from work since we wanted to maximize our time there. The B&B that we chose was fantastic. A husband and wife own the place and the wife has Celiac's. We had sworn we would never stay in another place where the owner needed to be eat gluten-free. However, I guess it is more prevalent here. Anyway, this meant that Karen was able to have toast and sausage with the rest of her breakfast. :-) They even met us at the door by asking if we wanted a cup of tea! Definitely our kind of place!

Saturday morning, we headed to the cliffs. The B&B owner told us of a footpath, but we ended up driving up there, which turned out to be a really good idea. There is no way either of us could have made it up the hill/mountain. :P We walked along the cliffs while fighting the wind. We could barely see France across the English Channel. We also watched the ferries going in and out of the port. We then took the car back to the B&B so that we could wander around city centre. We headed down to the sea front and looked around. After that, we looked for the Dover Museum. This was a bit tricky because it was kind of hidden in a corner. However, we prevailed and were able to locate it. The first floor was a bit disappointing, but the rest was really cool. There was an exhibit on the Victorian era, an exhibit on Dover through the years (very interesting!), and there was the Bronze Age boat that had been found back in the 90's. That was really cool. There was even a short film showing the quick excavation that had to be done (it was found during some road construction) and how it was preserved. After that, we had tea at a place called Dickens corner (yes, referring to Charles Dickens). Then we wandered around the town a bit more before heading back to the B&B. We rested for awhile and then had dinner at a local pub. There were some interesting characters in there. Since Karen and I like to people watch, we had a good time.

The next morning, we planned to go to the castle and spend most of the day there before driving home. When we got up, the weather was horrible! Pouring down rain and high winds. The B&B owner called the castle for us to check to see if it was going to open (since it's on top of the cliffs, they close during bad weather). However, at that point in time, they were still determining what was going to happen. Since we are English Heritage members and were going to get in free, we decided to head up to the castle to see what would happen. They let us in and we drove up to the parking lot / ticket office. We ran the 25 feet to the ticket office and got pretty wet (no way to use umbrellas because of the high winds). When we entered, the guy behind the counter asked if we were members. When we said yes, he said okay, come on in. At that moment, the keep of the castle was closed, but they were planning to do the 10:30 tour of the Secret Wartime Tunnels (originally built during the Napoleonic wars, but later enlarged and used heavily during WWII...in face, the evacuation of Dunkirk was spearheaded from here). So, we got our tickets and figured out the route to the tunnels. This was taking us down the hill, in the rain. We linked arms and headed out into the storm. We half ran, half walked and by the time we arrived, we were pretty soaked. Someone did mention that they thought we were crazy. They are probably right, but oh, well. We took the tour, which was really interesting. They have a narration going through speakers and there are smells piped in, like beef stew in the kitchen/dining areas and antiseptic in the hospital area. Apparently, it used to be stronger along with fake blood strewn around the hospital area, but they had to tone it down due to people fainting. Whew!! Once we finished with the tour, the weather had improved and the keep opened. We slowly made our way back up the hill to the actual castle. We wandered through it and watched the actors that portrayed people like King Henry II, Princess Alice (the betrothed of Richard the Lionheart), and John Lackland (the Prince John from Robin Hood). The actors were pretty good, but there were a couple of statements that I didn't feel were quite historically accurate...sorry, I was a history major. We even climbed to the roof of the castle to get some really cool views. We also checked out the church and Roman lighthouse that are on the castle grounds. After that, we drove back to Reading.

Tomorrow, we are going to the birthday party of our oldest nephew. He turned 4 this week! Then on Sunday, we leave for a real vacation! I have taken off about a week and a half of work. We are going to Ireland and Wales. We're very excited about the trip. Hopefully, I can keep up with postings while on the road.

Dover photos

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