Day 9 in England: There Were (Not) Bluebirds Over the White Cliffs of Dover

 

The sky was VERY blue, however!

I don't like the feeling of not being... thorough, I guess, in my sightseeing. If I'm going to a place, I've always had an open-to-close, see all the things or die trying kind of personality: hence the previous day's silly and anxious dithering over even going into Canterbury Cathedral if I couldn't spend a proper eight hours seeing every nook and cranny of artistic and historic interest. 

It was AGONY, then to have to do so much tourism triage on this trip! I really wanted to see the White Cliffs of Dover, and Dover Castle, the Dover Museum with its Bronze Age boat, the ossuary at St. Leonard, three different castles and one priory on my route from Dover through Hastings and on towards our overnight accommodations in the little town of Rowland's Castle. 

Mostly, though, I really wanted to see Battle Abbey and the site of the Battle of Hastings, so painful as it was, we had, gulp, to prioritize. Here, after much agonizing, was the day's itinerary:

• Hike to a good viewpoint to see the White Cliffs of Dover
• Peek into Dover Castle
• Battle Abbey and Hastings Battlefield from early afternoon to close
• Bramber Castle ruins
• dinner and overnight at the Robin Hood Inn in Rowland's Castle

Were we less terrified to get back into our rental car this morning?

We. Were. NOT.

So many tiny, windy roads on the way up to the White Cliffs of Dover! No matter what Matt tells you, I swear that I did NOT scream at him; I cannot say the same thing about him, ahem. But what a view for the last sights you're positive you will see on this earth: Dover Castle up among the clouds, blue sea meeting the blue sky off the coast, green pastureland with chalky bits at the roadcuts. It was an enchanting spot to never quite remember what side of the road you were meant to be on, or what the speed limit was, or where you were supposed to turn shit we just passed it.

Another enchantment that we experienced in nearly every natural and historic site we visited: the used book shop!

Nearly every place had one! This tent was the nicest, but most sites had a few shelves of used books in their gift shop or foyer. It was hard to convince the kids, much less myself, not to fill up our entire carry-on luggage with books.

But no books at the moment, because nobody would want to carry them on our hike to see the White Cliffs!

We never figured out how to open these gates, even though it looked like it was supposed to be dead simple. Matt and the teenager were the most adept at fiddling with them until they opened; the college kid often simply scaled the gate, and I liked to lurk until another hiker came by and then follow at their heels:

There were numerous pretty and magical things along our path--

Real chalk!!!

--but this was the prettiest:

And look at that ocean! And that sky!

My teenager looked so adorable taking a photo of me and Matt that I had to ruin her photo by also taking a photo of her photographing us...

And then I took a selfie for my Facebook!

We didn't walk the entire coastal path, because triage, but on the way back I made a monumental discovery that derailed us entirely for a good, long while: The White Cliffs of Dover has a TEA SHOP!!!

It turned out that almost ALL of the natural and historical sites we would visit on this trip would have tea shops!!!! And I would order myself a nice cream tea and a scone with clotted cream and jam in every single one! 

My diet on this trip now became 70% clotted cream, 20% hard cider, 10% Cadbury with Popping Jellies. I have zero regrets.

As we hiked back to our car, we could see our next destination in the distance:

Just one terrifying drive, complete with one terrifying parking experience later, we were walking through Colton's Gate--

--into the outer bailey, then through the much bigger Palace Gate, and on to the Great Tower of Dover Castle:

The inside of the Great Tower is set up with Medieval-era furnishings and decorations, and you can wander around and explore:

Yikes!

Throne room. Henry II must have been so comfy here!

Arrowslits for defense

We were able to see the entire inside of the Great Tower and walk the Medieval tunnels, but we decided that we probably didn't have enough time to explore the wartime tunnels that we'd also really wanted to see. Triage is so painful, but I had a very, very, very important date with history that I didn't want to skimp on!

On to Battle Abbey! I was so excited that I was practically vibrating out of my skin. I pored over everything in the museum, cast my most important vote--

--and then we walked the perimeter of the battle site! THE battle site!!! There was an audio tour that told the exciting tale of the battle, and these awesome carved wood sculptures scattered around to illustrate the scenes:

My face, you guys. I WAS SO INTO THIS MOMENT.

There was randomly a private school located on the grounds of the abbey, so as we passed the battlefield on one side, on the other side we passed children playing soccer. Also, sheep!

Standing at the far end of the battlefield, closest to France, you can just see Battle Abbey at the top of the hill:

It was absolutely enchanting.

After walking the battlefield, we explored the ruins of the abbey, built over the very spot where Harold was killed:

We picked up the teenager where she'd been wandering around and not learning anything, played on an absolutely epic Medieval-themed playground, and then everyone sat outside the lovely cafe and had a snack.

My snack? Cream tea and scones with jam and clotted cream, of COURSE!

Y'all, they have little single-serving containers of clotted cream. WHY DO WE NOT HAVE LITTLE SINGLE-SERVING CONTAINERS OF CLOTTED CREAM?!?!?!?

Matt had a horror of driving through England at night, so we really needed to get our butts to Rowland's Castle, but I also have an absolutely ridiculous Google Map on which I had marked absolutely every site of interest that I could find in eight months of trip planning--

--and whenever I set up our navigation to get us to our next stop, I'd check my map to see what we were passing near-ish to, then kick up a fuss and insist that we ought to actually stop and see all of these things, since they were "on the way."

But to be fair, that is how we discovered what would be the kids' favorite activity: poking around castle ruins!

This is Bramber Castle:

I think we parked accidentally illegally on a neighborhood street, then hiked up the hillside path to discover the utter magic that is the ruins of a castle on a hill:

I lost sight of Matt and the kids, and thinking that they might have started back down the path (they hadn't, and instead were exploring what they later told me was a very charming knoll), I wandered back down a few yards, myself. I didn't see them, so I started looking around harder, and oh, my god, look what I found:

It's a holloway! I'd been reading about them and really hoped to find one, and even had a couple of places in Dorset marked where I was pretty sure we could hike to one. But of course a magical, ancient castle on a hill would have an equally ancient footpath passing by it. 

I walked down this particular holloway until I couldn't see the main path anymore. I was still right there where I'd been, not far from the roundabout and the A283, but it felt like I was miles away and 3,000 years ago:

It was SO GREAT, you guys.

• Day 1: We made it to England!
• Day 2: Westminster Abbey, National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, and Six
• Day 3: British Museum and Buckingham Palace
• Day 4: Mudlarks and Southwark
• Day 5: Natural History Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum
• Day 6: Pax Lodge, the Tower of London, and Afternoon Tea
• Day 7: Back and Forth by Boat to Greenwich
• Day 8: We Careen Our Way to Canterbury Cathedral and Dover Beach
• Day 9: Dover, Hastings, and a Holloway
• Day 10, Part 1: All the Giant Rocks
• Day 10, Part 2: Stonehenge, At Last!
• Day 11: To Avalon with King Arthur
• Day 12: Tintagel
• Day 13: In the Footsteps of Mary Anning
• Day 14: Homewards!