July 22: On To Dover

This marks the spot in my trip where I re-join the original plan.  The Cantabile tour in Paris was over last night (sigh!) and I would have been taking a train to Calais this morning followed by a ferry to Dover.  Today instead I took a train from London to Dover and now I'm back to the plan.   I had always thought it would be cool to take a ferry across the Channel and that's still on my bucket list, but I will still have the chance to explore Dover.  My original idea when I planned the trip was to use my full day to go on a hike where I could see the famous White Cliffs.  Since then, while I was still in Kingston I happened to notice a little program on our cable called "Secrets of Great British Castles" and they had an episode about Dover Castle.  I hadn't realised Dover had a castle!  So I recorded and watched it and it was fascinating and I knew I'd have to explore the castle on my day there, and hopefully see a bit of the cliffs as well.

So I got on a train to Dover this afternoon, looking forward to two quiet hours with a good book and some pretty scenery going by.  And I got a screaming child sitting right across the aisle.  I complained about a screaming child on the plane on the way over, but,he really didn't make noise all that long.  This one *screamed* almost constantly for an hour and a half until he and his mother finally got off the train.  At least I wasn't trying to sleep this time, but it was really something.  He didn't seem to be sick, just a very exuberant little guy who wanted to run full speed around the train and did NOT like being stopped.  I'm not sure I've ever seen a mom looking quite as tired as this one did.

I was happy to get off the train at the end and head for my B&B.  There's a long street near the train station in Dover with a whole lot of pretty guest houses and B&Bs and I discovered other ones as I explored the town.  Dover is a fairly small town but it has huge numbers of people going through it on the way to and from the Channel ferries, so I guess it makes sense that a lot of them stop for the night.  They may want to break up their trip, or like me they may want to stop and see what's there.  Anyway, the street with my B&B is really pretty:

And here's my B&B, complete with beautiful garden:

 No photos of the inside, but it's just as nice as the outside and the owner seems very friendly.

Once I got settled in my room I went out for a walk.  I visited the information center but didn't really learn anything new.  But I enjoyed seeing the downtown area and just wandered around exploring for quite a while.  Some of it was just like any other town, full of modern stores, but some sections were just adorable, with gardens and pretty old homes and churches. 

And always the castle looming over it all.  Any time you turn in the right direction in this town, you see it.

After seeing the size of the castle complex and how high it is above the town I'm understanding more of what I heard on the TV show about Dover Castle's key position for defending England!  I would normally be determined to climb up there on my own steam, but maybe I'll see if there's a bus and save my energy for exploring when I'm there....