White Cliffs of Dover

There'll be bluebirds over the White Cliffs over Dover

Tomorrow just you wait and see.

Canterbury is only about a half hour drive from Dover so we headed off for a day trip, with the intent of seeing the Whte Cliffs. When we turned into the road leading us to them we spotted Dover Castle (which we didn't know about) and decided to start with a visit to it first. We were also more than happy to discover that our NZ Historic Trust card gives us reciprocal free entry rights to English Heritage sites, as well as National Trust sites. The castle sits on top of the White Cliffs, and is described in Wikipedia as
"Dover Castle is a medieval castle in Dover, Kent. It was founded in the 12th century and has been described as the "Key to England" due to its defensive significance throughout history. It is the largest castle in England."

The highlights for us were the secret wartime tunnels that were built in 1797 to house barracks for soldiers. These tunnels were used again during WW 2 as a bombproof centre for the defence of the coast. We queued for nearly an hour for a tour of these tunnels, and the wait was worth it. A series of multi-media presentations gave us a excellent overview of the war in relation to the area. It was from these tunnels that Vice-Admiral Betram Ramsay directed the evacuation from the beaches of Dunkirk in the 1940.

After some lunch in the cafeteria we climbed to the top of the great tower, which gave us excellent views including looking down on the port where we could see all the freight trucks waiting to board the ferries.

Next stop were the cliffs. We drove to the National Trust car park and headed off on foot. Initially we thought we would just walk to the 'lookout' but we were enjoying ourselves so much we continued onto the light-house, a good 50 minutes which gave us some views of the famous cliffs. Unfortunately the day was cloudy so the views across to France hazy and the best views of the cliffs would be best from the sea. We also passed by some more tunnels that have only recently been discovered and these too are open to the public though we were too late in the day to do this.

The other highlight of the day was seeing the site and memorial to the French aviator Louis Bleriot. On 25 July 1909 he flew the first powered flight across the channel and crash landed near where we were parked. The stone silhouette is set into the ground and marks the spot where he landed.

All in all a good day.

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