The Peak District

When we went to Dover, it was the end of August. Since September was my last month to complete the ol' disseration and pretty much all I did was that, we can skip forward a full month to our special celebratory weekend trip to the famous Peak District, a few hours north of here. Ed took a Friday and Monday off so we could have three nights in a quaint little cottage a few miles away from a quaint little town called Buxton.

I'm just gonna do a quickie entry today because I got an invitation earlier to do an interview for a teaching position at a Japanese junior college and I want to think about that instead right now.

Anyway, here are pictures of the quaint little cottage and its quaint little surroundings. It consisted of a bedroom/living room/dining room:

And there was a little tiny kitchen that was kind of awkward, since I would make breakfast and Ed wouldn't be able to do anything since he couldn't fit into the area next to the stove. The ceiling was too damn low.

And the sloping ceiling made things even worse in the bathroom, because it meant you couldn't stand up to take a shower. I either took a bath or a sitting-down shower, which was kind of not fun. Bath was okay, though, when we had time. It was kind of annoying that even little ol' me would knock my back up against the ceiling when I stood up to get my towel. Jeez. Poor architectural planning.

Other than the terrible ceiling, most everything was nice. We were on a little dirt road next to the house of the cottage owners. They talked funny! HA HA HA.

In the "back yard" was a series of fields in which some horses and ponies grazed sometimes.

Also, the cottage owner was building a little stone wall to separate the cottage from their yard. This meant that the little patio area that was advertised was not really available to us. But we didn't need it, anyway. The point of going to the Peak District was to go out on wicked long walks all day.

Next time I'll tell you about our first excursion into Buxton, the first evening we were in the area.

The White Cliffs of Dover

After wandering around Dover Castle for a few hours, it was getting dangerously late in the day to go admire something outdoors, so we started walking over towards the cliffs. It looked like a really long walk from the castle, but it ended up taking less time than we thought to get there, maybe 30-40 minutes. On the way there was this sign for a public footpath. I guess it's for jaunty hikers specifically.

We took some more shots of the castle from over by the cliffs. Criss-cross!

This is me, pointing at the castle, in case you missed it.

Finally we made it over there. There are a number of easy walking paths at different levels above the cliffs.

 We were being a bit loud while taking a bunch of photos by this little precipice, or maybe it was just me, and then Ed noticed there was an old couple right above us trying to enjoy the view in peace. Oh, well. I can at least hope I wasn't as annoying as the recorded port announcements.

There's always room to pull a Riker.

 Nice face.

Here's the port. Imagine. Also, you can see France, sort of.

Views from slash of the trail:

Here's another cool cloudy sunset castle.

So as the sun was setting, we figured we ought to get back to the car. Also, I think we were really hungry. We took a different way back, that led right into town, since it seemed quicker. There were dangers along the way, though.

This is where we got back down to city-level, where we wondered how shitty it is to have a garage right below a big cliff that drops rocks on its ceiling, and possibly your car as you drive in or out.

The neighborhood (neighbourhood) that our exit path led us to really drove home our earlier suspicions that except for the tourist sites, Dover is a total shithole.

Dover Castle

I just realized I got confused about the timeline and Dover should really have been before Falmer Village, but what are you gonna do.

The  weekend we went to Stonehenge was a long weekend--that Monday was one of those "shits and giggles" bank holidays they have over here. So since we were forced to have our rental car until Tuesday morning, we took the opportunity to go see the White Cliffs of Dover. But because the White Cliffs are just cliffs, we decided to go to Dover Castle first, to give us a whole day in Dover. As usual, we didn't get into town until like 2 or 3 (because I'm not a morning person), so we didn't have a helluva lot of time to explore the castle, but we still saw quite a bit of stuff.

Here's me, possibly when we first got out of the parking lot (car park), with the castle way in the background, and of course, ominous clouds.

We had brought a lunch with us, so we stopped at a little park with a crick (a word Ed was not familiar with) and had a sandwich and played on the rocks and little river island.

The castle seems to be visible no matter where you are in the town. Although now that I look at this picture again, I realize this is the driveway that leads to the entrance of the castle. Still, you can see this thing from miles away.

Here are some views of the town and the outer perimeter from the entrance.

There's always time to strike a Riker:

Here are some white cliffs visible from inside the castle grounds, but I don't think they're THE White Cliffs.

Dover Castle isn't just one big building, it's kind of like a whole town unto itself. The grounds are like at least half a mile long, and there are all these different buildings, tunnels, towers, and the like. It's really a full day's visit, which is perhaps why it's so expensive to get in. If you go here: http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/daysout/properties/dover-castle/exploremap/ you can see an interactive map of the whole site.

They seemed to have some sort of pirate-themed meeting point system going on around there, so I took advantage of the parrot.

Here's a model of Dover Castle on a normal day:

Here's a model of Dover Castle on a BAD DAY:

The main building, which is called the Great Tower, is where we spent most of our visit. It had lots of rooms, like bedrooms, parlors, rooms of worship, kitchens, blah blah blah. There were a bunch of actors roaming around in period costumes who were there to answer questions (in or out of character), but we avoided them like the plague, which may itself have passed through there, too.

Map, old skool:

I would hate to study in there. It looks boring and cold.

Ah, so it wasn't Korean teenagers who invented that pose...

In Soviet Russia, STAIR forks YOU!

 

But seriously, there were a lot of stairs in that tower, and I wanted to make sure we saw everything, but those stairs led every which way, and they spiralled, too, so I just don't know.

Here's what it looks like from the top, anyway.

I wanted to go down to that little lookout point with the little staircase, but the way down there was blocked. BOOO-urns.

Here's the toilet room in the Great Tower:

Although Ed was sure that I would not go through with it when some other tourists happened to join us in the toilet viewing, I did in fact go through with the ol' "Looks like she's pooping" pose. I think I inspired others to do this as well.

The kitchen had all these models of food, like breads and fruits and giant pig carcasses, hanging from the ceiling, but I guess we didn't take a picture. Got the kegs, though.

That thar is a catapult I reckon.

Here is another building we made it into, the old Roman lighthouse (Pharos), but we didn't go next door, which I think is the Anglo-Saxon church.

As we started to think about leaving, we made our way to the outer wall area, to czech out the admiralty lookout and the battlements walk.

And we kept trying to take photos of the distant White Cliffs.

Just look at that rakish lip curl.

These are the ol' barracks:

More White Cliffs. We were talking about what a shame it is that a nice area with a lot of grass and trees and places to walk or sit and look over the ocean at France would have to be ruined by the paved sprawl of a giant port, with noisy porty announcements every five minutes. But the port has been there for hundreds of years, since it's the closest point to France, so there's not much could have been done about it.

Anyway, back to the show.

Oh, but the show is done. Sorry. Here's Dover Castle from afar on the other side, as we took a walk over to the Cliffs, which were much closer than they seemed when we were taking the pictures above.