29 March 2023 - Deal & Dover Castle
Miles driven today = 19
Total Miles to date = 244
This morning we decided to see what the deal was with Deal so we trundled the few miles down the coast, studiously avoiding the town's largely pedestrianised centre. We found a parking spot half a mile or so to the south of the town and donned waterproofs to protect us against the persistent mizzle.
The first major point of interest we happened upon as we made our way back towards the town was the quaintly compact castle, which was one of 3 built in this part of the World by Henry VIII to fend off the French and Spanish and their dubious Catholic ways. The walls were rounded to deflect cannonballs fired from the sea.
Otherwise we felt that Deal's online tourist info rather oversells itself. Middle Street is supposed to be the town's most attractive thoroughfair but I'm guessing we must have overlooked the nicer bits.
Even the pier didn't look particularly appealing in the murk.
The Ball Tower was interesting though. It was originally the site of a "shutter telegraph" system in the late 18th century, which was capable of sending news of possible Napoleonic invasion to London in just 2 minutes. The time ball was installed in 1853 to allow ships' navigators to set their clocks and thereby allow accurate sextant navigation. At 1pm every day the ball was dropped automatically by an electrical current from Greenwich. Nowadays it drops every hour.
We were getting thoroughly drenched so we scuttled back to the van for a spot of lunch and to dry ourselves off. But with less soggy conditions forecast for the afternoon we decided to head for Dover Castle. We arrived a little after 1pm giving us 3 hours before closing time at 4. You would have thought that would be more than enough time to have a good look round but I have to say you would probably need double that to see everything and get full value for money for the £46 it cost us to get in.
We were advised to initially head to the tunnels which were used as an operations centre for planning the Dunkirk evacuation of allied troops in 1940. The tunnels were first dug during the Napoleonic wars and fell into disuse but were reopened for WWII and via a series of multimedia shows we were able to see how the decisions made in these spaces led to the rescue of more than 300,000 allied troops in the flotilla of small ships. Officially no photos were allowed but I did manage to sneakily take this one of one of the mocked up operations rooms.
There are numerous Artillery pieces dotted round the castle from medieval mortars to this WWII anti-aircraft gun.
With time ticking on we clambered up the steep hill to the castle itself which was built by Henry II.
There is a one-way route which takes you all the way to the top of the main keep and back down again. This Chapel is one of the first rooms we came to.
Ancient grafitti on the castle walls.
Reconstructed winch equipment to draw water from the castle's deep well.
There are 4 large vaulted rooms in the castle. This one was reconstructed as a banqueting hall.
And this one as a bed chamber.
The town and port of Dover as viewed from the top of the castle.
Several of the buildings in the courtyard surrounding the keep also have interesting exhibits.
This is a Saxon church which was built in 1000AD i.e. before the Norman conquest. The tower to the right is a Roman lighthouse constructed during the 1st Century AD.
Looking up inside the lighthouse.
For tonight's stopover we have backtracked just a couple of miles up the coast to St Margaret's Bay. We are at a great little pub called The Coastguard, which has a large gravel carpark overlooking the sea and we can watch the ferries sailing in and out of Dover from our windscreen. It's Steak Wednesday here so we have taken full advantage of their BOGOF steak deal. Rump for Lisa and Ribeye for me. Very nice!
Unfortunately we have no data signal here and the pub's WiFi doesn't extend to the car park so I'm going to be at least a day late in publishing this missive. However we have both received text messages from Vodafone saying "Welcome to France" and the clock on my phone is currently reading an hour fast. I wish!
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