July 23: A Castle and a Traffic Jam

This morning after breakfast I asked the very nice owner of my B&B about catching a bus up to the castle.  There are no buses.  I asked for advice about calling a taxi.  She offered to call one for me and disappeared and was gone for longer than I expected, then she came back and told me there were no taxis available either.  Every one of the taxis in town was caught up in a horrific traffic jam.  They had a TV in the breakfast room playing the morning news and it included an item about this, but I hadn't realised quite how bad it was.  Here is a link to a news story from today.  I'm not sure whether that will be available indefinitely.  In summary, the French have very understandably decided that they need to make more careful security checks after the terrorist activity that's been going on in Europe lately, so they have instituted new policies for checking people coming over from Dover on the ferries.  It seems, however, that neither they nor the English authorities have supplied extra people to do the more time-consuming screenings.  The result is a huge long back-up holding up people wanting to get on the ferries.  The taxis do a lot of business shuttling people from the train station to the ferry terminal and they're all stuck in the mess. 

The owner assured me that the walk to the castle wasn't as bad as I thought, so off I went.  And she was right.  It wasn't as long as it looked, although parts of it were steep.  I just took it slow and turned around and admired the views when I needed to catch my breath.  Before I knew it I turned a corner and realised how high I was when I saw the Channel for the first time:

I debated with myself several times today about whether I could see France across the Channel and the truth is that I really don't know.  At times I thought I might be seeing land across the water, but it may have been just a change in the haze.  Still, it was really exciting to see the Channel itself.  That narrow body of water has been a part of an awful lot of history!

Soon after that, I crossed over the castle moat and got my first view of the Castle:

 Like most castles, this one is not a single building but a walled complex containing many buildings.  In this one, the ages of the buildings vary a lot.  This location has been important for a very long time and they think there were Iron Age fortifications here.  The Romans certainly were here, and the castle includes this Roman lighthouse:

 

The building next to the lighthouse is a Saxon church, currently under renovation (so we couldn't go in) and it is still being used for church services.

I wasn't even at the top of the hill yet!  After more uphill walking, I reached the medieval castle, consisting of several buildings enclosed by a wall with many towers for defense. 

Henry II was responsible for a lot of the medieval part of the castle.  If (like me) you have trouble keeping all the kings straight, here is what I learned today plus a little help from Google.  Henry II  was the great-grandson of William the Conquerer and lived from 1133 to 1189.  This was a time when the kings of England also ruled a lot of modern-day France.  He was married to Eleanor of Aquitaine (a marriage which added quite a bit to his land) and they had three sons who were always bickering with each other and trying to undermine their father.  Two of these sons are well known from the Robin Hood legends: Richard the Lionhearted and King John.  Henry II also is the king who is reputed to have said "who shall rid me of this turbulent priest?", leading to the death of Thomas Becket, who will certainly come up again when I visit Canterbury.  

Anyway, Henry II built many buildings up on this hill, all fortified with walls and towers, to protect the position from invading ships and also to show off his power and prestige to visiting European monarchs.  The largest structure inside the walls is the Great Hall:

Inside there are many rooms made up to look like they might have in Henry II's time, with costumed interpreters who made it all very interesting.  One of the rooms was a chapel built in memory of Thomas Becket.  Not sure if that was King Henry expressing penance or saying "wasn't my fault"....  The lighting wasn't good enough to get any decent pictures of these rooms; as one of the interpreters pointed out, safety and staying warm were a lot more important to these people than the light levels!  I did get some good pictures from the windows:

I even mastered my fear of heights enough to climb to the roof of the building for more wonderful views, including this one with the ferry coming in:

The castle continued to be used for military purposes for many years, including the Napoleonic wars and several other squabbles with France and ending with World War II.  There are lots of tunnels from various periods underneath the visible part of the castle.  I took a guided tour of some of these which were used doing World War II:

It hasn't been publicly known until fairly recently, but the military base at Dover did a lot of important things in World War II, including organizing the evacuation of Dunkirk and misleading the Nazis about the planned location of the D-Day invasion.  The tour was structured as if the people on tour were being briefed to join the war effort.  It was very interesting and moving to learn what the real people involved did without much public recognition.

After hours of walking around, I headed back down.  On the way I noticed the clever organic way they are keeping down the weeds in some of the steep sections of the Castle hill:

At this point I had certainly accomplished one of my goals for the day, which was to explore the castle.  But I hadn't really gotten a good view of the White Cliffs yet -- just a few glimpses of them edge on, like this:

Still, it wasn't the big panorama I'd been hoping for. So instead of walking back to the B&B the way I came I figured out how to get to the area near the ferry port.  People talk about seeing the White Cliffs as they sail in on the ferry, so I figured I'd get a view there and I was right.  They are huge and bright white and very impressive!

My feet were pretty tired by this time, but it was worth the extra steps to see this famous and beautiful sight.

I also saw a much less beautiful sight in this area:

Traffic was still backed up and at a standstill.  I watched the news this evening and heard that there were people in those cars -- including families with small children -- who were without food, water and even bathrooms all day.  Some good Samaritans had started taking supplies around to the cars; I wish I had known and I would have helped them, sore feet or not.  I do understand the need for security, but this wasn't managed well at all.  It reminds me of the trip we took to Florida with 3 small children soon after 9/11 -- but that was just a few miserable hours in Pearson Airport and not a whole day in the heat.