Dover Castle 2011: Top Top Day out :-)

English Heritage entry, and not cheap at £16 per adult. But it is THE FINEST DAY OUT :-)

Members in for free... that'll be Sair and Zak then :)

It's mammoth... vast. Sair and I got there at 10:30 am, and by 4:30 hadn't finished, and it was getting dark.

So... what's there?

http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/c...nated_view.jpg http://www.aboutdoverkent.co.uk/wp-c...y1-300x153.jpg

Medieval: Early 13th Great Tower , in STUNNING condition, with full furnished interior.. proper proper stuff. Smell of wood fires, mammoth wall hangings for insulation and colour, beds, mammoth kitchen area,.... it's intense. If you love castles.. this is the daddy. Thank Henry II early 1200.
http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/d.../virtual-tour/

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6072/...1ce2d21634.jpg

Ramparts, Battlements and stunning planning: You HAVE to go down the Medieval tunnels, see the canon power firing up the moat from low-down, to believe THE POWER. And the sally ports (secret escape or way in for friends) and the mammoth "air lock style doors" to stop other people getting in,.... genius. And great adventure. I smiled or laughed for 6 hours straight.

Small but densely packed rooms in the outher curtain wall full of Militaria... and upper walls lined with canons and ...... ANTI AIRCRAFT GUNS>.. big bugger bofors guns... oh... quite modern? That's not 1207 AD!

which brings me to why Sair and I went....

World War 2 Tunnels.... :) :)

hold onto your hats... this will heap the history on thick and fast.

Bear in mind the castle ground are mammoth with 3 car parks IN IT, so you wak around on good paths, and roads.... queue for the Dunkirk Evacuation tour... amd 30 people go down the tunnel and a..... it's steep... you're held in a "waiting room" and for over 7 minutes, you read 1939 news papers... waiting.. like evacuees... for me it was intense.. then the light over the door goes from red to green and the bloke asks you to move on... out of the door and down the corridors. Looking left and right you can see long dark ... frankly scary tunnels.. all corrugated roofed, and some are huge rooms full of bunk beds. It's intense..and the bloody lights flicker. Man.......

into the next room.. a briefing video of whay WW2 kicked off. Don't be shy or embarressed for not knowing., its complex, but this film helps... then the lights change.. and off you al go again.

These tunnels are LONG....

how long..?

3.8 MILES... on 3 floors.

and were they important?

http://www.culture24.org.uk/asset_ar.../v0_master.jpg yup

/goose bumps. I'm LOVING this.

The tour continues and it IS friendly and in places light hearted but ... but... it got to me. It's dark, scary and yet.. it was HOME.

And then.. into a long long corridor with a dark invisible end... and the tour has us all stand against the wall and face the other side of the parabolic roof/wall.
http://www.kentonline.co.uk/images/D...D1858117_l.jpg
But wierd..... and then the projectors above us hit the opposite wall with a fantastic silouette of WW2 offic staff and great great audio debate planning the evacuation of our soldiers from the British Expeditionary Force from invaded France.

For the non knowing (don't blush.. you can't know it until you're told) a mammoth flottila of tiny non-sea worthy boats scrambled across the Channel and collected a multitude of out good soldiers. Day after day.

How many? Well the guess was 40,000

but the result was over 330,000

a THIRD OF A MILLION.

And the light in the tunnel chenged.. they moved down the tunnel.. and we all shuffled along to the next section... and the next.. and then swapped sides to see the next part.

it was inspired and someone needs a medal for this. Each section is split by back gauze fabric and until it's back lit, you don't know it's there... and then it lights up... and you all move on.

As you can tell, I'm proper impressed.

The second tour takes you through the upper level of the tunnels which was a WW2 medical hospital

http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/c...vel-wwii-4.jpg
http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/c...r-hospital.jpg and in its own way, better. Imagine operating on a WW2 Battle of Britain pilot full of shrapnel who's been pulled out of the sea and dumped on you to save.. and the lights go out. Proper out. Dark..... Well in a gentle and non threatening way this occurs in the tour.

And the genius of WW2 engineering brings you to a .... toilet.

Why a toilet? Because it has a window. And where is the window?

hmm?



in the white cliff's of Dover.

in the cliff. Looking out of that bog window .. is France.

That's how close the tunnel comes to the edge

I can't sell this anymore... you all get it now. It's expensive, but it's so worth it.

And the original WW2 tunnels section that opened last year in deeper.. and the Napoleonic wars are to blame for needing 2000 men to be in readyness at Dover, under ground...

We're great aren't we? The British I mean? We love digging ;)

And to get out of these tunnels? Well, apart from the sloped tunnel from the side that I went into, there is a spiral stair case... but not a normal one. Oh no. A Double helix... so two interwined. For either double volume of soldiers gettting out, or, allegedly, one for the riff raff, and one for Officers ;)

Like Castles? Like WW2 and WW1 history?

Go to Dover Castle.
http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/d.../dover-castle/
http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/d...le/exploremap/
http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/d...rtime-tunnels/
http://www.kentonline.co.uk/kentonli...k_tunnels.aspx

I love Dover castle.
If you like a castle, and a pub lunch in front of the open fire, I can thoroughly recommend Bodiam. It's not as full on as Dover, but it's cheaper too. (free for the Nt members)
http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main...to_gallery.htm

http://thecastleinnbodiam.com/

I will definitely try and add that onto our "grand tour" of europe next year as it'l on the way to the ferries/tunnel (more tunnels!)

Thanks for that Zakky - very informative!

has anyone else got any photo's of it that they can post?

It recently been done up. They did a time team special on it; http://www.channel4.com/programmes/t...es-1/episode-4 Quite interesting. :)

Try not to go on a cold windy day as the entire site is exposed.

Well worth finding out more about (to me ) one of the heroes of the 2nd world war Bertram Ramsay before going as well.