27 April 2014

Dover - Day 3

Robyn Writes....
Today we finally got to explore Dover Castle, after several days of gazing at it from all angles in and out of town. This morning we managed a sleepin – woke up at about 6.20, which was a vast improvement on the last few days’ efforts of 4.30 and 5.30ish! After breakfast, we headed out for a walk around the town area to see what was there – found some lovely old churches and some very interesting shops, plus the local museum which all bear further inspection if we get the chance. The weather was cloudy but fine and cool so nice for a walk (all bundled up in several layers). I have seriously underpacked warm clothes and most days seem to have to wear almost everything warm I have all at once. Am hoping our Portsmouth flat will have a drier as well as a washer…the washing I did yesterday is still mostly quite damp (30 hours later).

On our walk, we finally discovered the local McDonald’s, which of course means free we-fi for the computers.

After coming back for a cuppa and a read of the Sunday papers, we finally headed up the hill to the castle at 10.30.

The Castle, but not all of it. It's huge

As we are English Heritage members, we didn’t have to pay anythingto get in. We decided to do the tour of the war tunnels first, but there was quite a queue so we were told we’d be in the 11.30 tour group. By then it was about 10 to 11, and the sun was coming out and the day warming up, so Lex kept our place in the queue while I headed back down to the Gate House to remove my thermal layer and find our hats! I arrived back in time for our tour, which was fantastic – very informative and enjoyable. Reminds you what an amazing feat the rescue of all of those soldiers from Dunkirk was. By the time we got out it was nearly 12.30 and a lovely warm day. We were hungry so we headed up the hill in search of the café, where we had a lovely lunch and a perfect pot of tea to share in real china cups!

After lunch we went and explored the rest of the castle – the great tower was amazing, and had decorations in some of the big rooms to show how they were used. Built by Henry II in 1180, it is kept in excellent condition and has lots of rooms decorated as they would have been in his day. They aren't real antiques, so you can sit on the thrones and seats. After years of having Medieval Banquet days in Year 7, it was wonderful to walk into a real Medieval banqueting hall and see it set up in the inverted "U" shape! As it was a special event day, there were people walking around in medieval dress and acting out stories. The highlight of this for the hundreds of children in the castle was at 3pm when St George on his horse first fought the wicked Saracen, then defeated the dragon. Sales of pre-school sized knight costumes, helmets and swords went through the roof, as did princess dresses! I oohed and aahed over a gorgeous Tudor princess dress for Livvy but the 25 pound price tag gave me slight heart failure....
  Lex wasn't interested in saints and dragons fighting, so he explored the medieval tunnels beneath the palace while I joined the crowd.



 

St George won !

We also looked at the museum of the Princess of Wales' Regiment and their history, the Saxon church which was restored during the 1860s (amazing place - Richard the Lionheart and his men slept there the night before they set off on one of their crusades, and it must have been a sleepless night, because some of their graffiti is still there near the pulpit) and the Roman lighthouse (or pharos) which is in amazingly good condition nearly 2000 years later. Tradition says it is guarded by the ghost of a Roman Centurion but we didn't see him there...

By this time it was four o'clock and the bad weather had started to roll in again with wind and rain. I decided I'd had enough and needed a cuppa, so I headed home down the hill (only a 5 minute walk from the castle) while Lex walked along some of the battlements. Back at the house after a much-needed caffeine boost, the sun came out again so we walked down to Macca's and free wi-fi to send emails, then back for tea (North Sea cod for Lex, Cumberland sausages for me - love the local foods!). Another exhausting day :)