Doing Dover

Thursday, August 25, 2011
Dover

As long as I can remember, my imagination has been stirred by the phrase "the white cliffs of Dover". And when I had gazed upon them for the first time, during a ferry crossing between Dover and Calais in France, many moons ago, I remember how awed I'd felt.

So you can imagine how thrilling it was not just to look at Dover's chalk cliffs but to walk through them, like a rabbit through a hole, to touch them, both on the outside and within, to scratch at them and find remnants of them in my nails and to see fallen chunks of them everywhere.

All this was possible today when my friend Shahnaz and her daughter Azra joined me at 7 am at Victoria Coach Station to journey to the east coast of Kent to explore Dover. Shahnaz was doubtful about the sagacity of the expedition. As long as she can remember, she has passed through Dover Ferry Port and dreaded it. Not knowing that the seaport is vulgarly rich in British military history, she was dubious about enjoying our day trip. But as she said at the end of the day, it was fantastic and her faith in my excursion decision-making was restored.

Scaling Dover Castle's Towering Walls:
We arrived in Dover at 10.00, waited for a half hour for a local bus to take us up the famous white cliffs to the entrance of Dover Castle, a great hulking mass of stone that sits high above the English Channel providing a strategic lookout for invading ships. Indeed, it was used for precisely that reason from Roman days. It was they who built a pharos or lighthouse--actually two of them--to shine like beacons across the waters and guide ships safely home. Today, the ruined remains of one of them continues to be battered by winds out on the water and sits cheek-by-jowl with a beautiful Anglo-Saxon church that dates from the days before William the Conqueror led his mighty fleet across the waves to bring England under Norman sway. The lighthouse and church are the oldest structures within the vast walled complex of Dover Castle, the town's chief attraction, and are also two of England's oldest buildings. From an exploration of these structures, the visitor is swept upon a rapid tour of British military history that brings us all the ways to World War II when Vera Lynn penned her famous song, "There'll be bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover..."

The Medieval Keep:
The gods smiled upon us for sure, providing blue skies and bracing sunshine as we scaled the hillside and began surveying Dover Castle. We followed the Highlights tour as suggested by my guide book and entered the Keep, built by Henry II, a wonderful medieval part of the Castle where young men and women in courtly garb (including His Majesty and his sister Marie de France) greeted visitors in courteous manner. Rooms filled with real and reproduced medieval furniture gave us a glimpse of English life under the Plantagenets. Of the many artifacts on display, the one that caught my eye was a gigantic leather bag (that looked like half of a saddlebag) that was filled with the silver pennies (the only coin minted in Henry II's day) by the taxes of peasants who swarmed upon the land. The Keep is in remarkably good condition, inside and out, and is the tallest structure in the complex. For some amusing reason, I kept recalling scenes from Blackadder as I walked through the darkened rooms.

Up the Ramparts:
Cannons dot the environs of the castle and gaze upon the waters of the Channel. Having been blessed with a clear day, we could easily see across to the infamous beaches of Normandy on the shores of France where the seaport of Calais glinted in the sunshine. I recalled many a flight across the Channel when I have seen both ports and the waters between them, punctuated by sea craft, from the air. The cannons provided perches for photo ops and to rest, because striding across from one building to the next, is exhausting.

The War-Time Tunnels of Dover:
By the time we realized that we needed to join a queue to enter the famed Wartime Tunnels, we were fatigued. It took us half an hour to join a tour guide who gave us a fascinating one hour tour of the chalky maze built in the mid-17oos as a military hideout. They were dug through with hand tools (no dynamite was used) and when we scratched the walls, we realized how easily that feat might have been accomplished. The walls are soft and moist and, not surprisingly, the tunnels were extended during World War II in order to create a useful labyrinth for the master-minding of Operation Dynamo that, under the command of Ramsay, brought English troops back home from Dunkirk. The entire historic achievement is re-created underground through a good short documentary film that is projected on the inside walls of the cliffs themselves. It was probably the best part of our visit.

Exploring the Medieval Tunnels:
Another exciting thing to do in the Castle complex is explore the medieval tunnels (but they pale in comparison to the War-time ones) and the army barracks which provide exhibits on British military history through the ages. Refreshment was sorely lacking within the complex that is administered by English Heritage, although we were pleased to taste spirits from the Middle Ages (mead and elderberry wine and sloe gin) in the gift shop where they are sold in pretty bottles together with more contemporary preserves such as Raspberry Curd and Strawberry Jam.

Walking Along the White Cliffs:
It took us five hours to explore the castle and we were grateful for the 'train' that takes visitors around because the walking was killing. By 4 pm after surviving only on a scone and date and walnut cake, we took a lovely winding wooded path to the ferry port from where we followed the National Trust-maintained White Cliffs Walk to the great East Cliff at the feet of which sits a row of pretty houses. We took our lives in our hands, as dodging huge trucks making their way across the Channel, we crossed the road to the beach-side Promenade to dip our toes into the waters of Matthew Arnold's famous Dover Beach. The 'sand' here is non-existent for, like Brighton, Dover's beach is pebbly, made up mainly of fat flint stones. They provided a superb natural foot massage for me while Shahnaz and Azra dunked their feet in the English Channel.

The Town of Dover:
A few minutes later, we returned to the town of Dover which is a completely post-war creation as the city was bombed repeatedly by the Germans during World War II and all but flattened. (Surprisingly, the Castle was left untouched, probably because Hitler intended to use it as a look-out point, in the same way that it had been used through the ages, when he, ultimately, got his ambitious hands upon Great Britain. Happily the Jerries were stalled in that endeavor by Churchill's masterminds, who operating from another series of burrows and bunkers at London's Whitehall--the Cabinet War Rooms--had brought the Fuhrer's plans to nought). Since every business establishment in the land downs its shutters at 5 pm sharp, we had no option but to enter MickeeDee's for filet of fish burgers which we wolfed down before we entered the 6. 15 coach back. Not one of us could keep our eyes open as we stopped at Canterbury and, like Chaucer's pilgrims, returned to London.

Dinner at One New Change:
A quick switch to the Tube brought us to St. Paul's Cathedral where we decided to explore London's newest shopping attraction, One New Change, right opposite Wren's stunning dome. With only a few stragglers around, we were grateful to find Zizzi Restaurant still open for business. Since a glass of Prosecco was urgently called for, I sipped deeplyof its revivifying bubbles before delving into a plate of Penne Alla Vodka (which, alas, was much too al dente for my liking) and half asleep over our bill, we made our fatigued way back home--me across the street to Amen Court, my companions on Bus 15 to Limehouse.

The expedition had provided the perfect English History Fix. We were glad we 'Did Dover'. One more item can be ticked off my To-Do List. Tomorrow, our appreciation of English History will continue in London--but I have promised myself to leave time for the more mundane aspects of a holiday--shopping!