Dover

The same day that BM and I traveled to Leeds Castle we also went to Dover to see the White Cliffs and the Castle that sits on top of them. This whole trip was a repeat of an earlier attempt back in March to see the same sites that didn’t turn out so well. This time everything went very smoothly. So after spending the morning at Leeds Castle we headed to Dover Castle. This was a much different Castle than Leeds. It sits on top of a very high hill where one front are cliffs that face the English Channel. From the top of the main keep you can actually see France pretty easily even in hazy weather. The castle consists of several rings of walls and building with a center courtyard that has a large medieval keep. Between the outer and inner ring of walls is the Church and outside the Castle walls lay an estate building made of stone with a slate rood, a glass toursist center and WWII gun banks facing Europe. What was surprising also was that outside the castle was a once secret set of tunnels where some parts of the WWII Naval operations were actually run from.

Once inside the main inner wall of the castle you walk through a courtyard paved with stone and can enter any number buildings lining the wall. There is a cafe, a gift shop, a British Military Museum, along the top of the wall you can also walk amongst a variety of cannon from the 1500s to the 1940s, and some other exhibits were as there but closed. There is also a large catapult in sitting to one side of the courtyard next to the main tower or keep in the center of the castle. The keep was used by many kings as a place to stay during trips to and from Europe; it was also used to store military goods, munitions, and supplies during the times when royalty was not there. You can explore several floors and are even allowed on the roof of the keep which offers spectacular views of the coast, the English Channel, and the French coast. It is a pretty old building and very utilitarian as no one used it as a residence. It was almost always used as a military facility. On interesting piece of information I found out about was that the castle is supposed to be very haunted and was even featured in a three hour special in 2002. Some of the passageways are certainly eerie enough to be homes to ghosts.

Just as amazing as the castle were the tunnels that lay beneath them. These are literally called the Secret Wartime Tunnels and have very good signs showing the way to the entrance. Originally dug during the Napoleonic wars as barracks for troops on their way to France they were later expanded greatly as a hospital and secret command center during WWII. The facilities were left basically intact so you can see the equipment and set up that was used during the Second World War. The hospital was pretty simple and was basically where we entered the tunnels. Later as you move through you are shown equipment rooms that once housed the most sophisticated telecom equipment of the day, the quarters of the Admiral in charge of the majority of British operations, the planning center used to evacuate the British forces from France as Hitler’s forces raced across the country, and some barracks used both a couple hundred years ago and during WWII. We got a little bit of a scare as we were the last tour and they basically shut the site down on us while we still in the middle of the tour. Our tour guide was brilliant though and was able to guide us out, before storming off to cause trouble with his co-workers. A scene BM and I would have loved to have watched.

After we were basically kicked out of the castle BM and I decided to go to a park that lets you walk along the famous White Cliffs of Dover. It was a pretty awe inspiring site to stand ½ way up the cliffs and watch the English channel as ferries and other boats left and came from the port. You could easily see most of the actual town of Dover and could walk right up to the face of the chalk based cliffs themselves. The only better way to see the cliffs is to actually take a ferry from Calais and watch the cliffs as you come into the dock. I was pretty happy to see it the way I did, I figured a hundred pounds to cross the channel twice was probably a lot to spend just for a better view of the cliff