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.