Dover

Ahhh blogging. Something that I HAVE to do (other my sister will fly over here and beat me up!) but also an excuse for not doing real work. I have come to love it! It’s a ritual in my life now, and I cant write a post without a pot of the Queen’s Jubliee tea from Fortnam and Mason. Worth every pence that I paid for it. (oh wait… that was mom! Thanks mom!!!) Im a bit sentimental today. Not really sure why. Perhaps its because the weather is once again rainy with grey skies (the kind that make you curl up inside and be thankful that you have nowhere to go!) Or maybe its because I looked in the corner of my computer and saw the date 20/07/2012. My adventure is coming to an end and quickly. I have only one more month in the small but great country and Im not too happy about it. If someone would have told me on Sept 26 2011 that I wouldn’t want to leave I wouldn’t have believed you at all! That first night was horrible (the first 2-3 weeks actually!) and I tried everything to convince my parents to let me come home! (what would you know… crying via skype doenst work. Since when are parents immune to tears??!) I guess parents know best when stranding their daughter in a foreign land and having her live in a dragon’s lair because it all ended well. What an amazing year I have had!!!

Ok enough with that for today but continuing on the amazing part… Dover was the best adventure that I have had this year (on this island!) My alarm went off at 8am and, like always, I had that 30 second thought of “lets just stay in bed”! I didn’t though and got up, dressed and packed. Alex and I were off at 9 and got the Victoria coach without a problem! We found the gate really easily too and hung out for about 20 minutes until our bus loaded!

Our bus was really nice… leather seats!! It was only a 2.5 hour bus ride there. It took us 50 minutes to get out of the city!! Alex and I talked most of the way there, and I ate my lunch and read Rick Steves. Right at 1pm we arrived and realized how big of a port Dover is! (Rick Steves told us that it is UK’s busiest port!) It was impressive! We saw our first white cliffs and I think we were both a bit disappointed. They seemed smaller and greyer than what we were expecting! The bus stopped at the city center, which was nice, and we decided to check out the castle first. Alex stopped and grabbed lunch at the grocery store and we were off!

The castle was really well marked (thankfully!) and the uphill hike was only a 5 minute climb so it wasn’t too bad! We bought entry tickets and wandered up to the site. We saw a tour getting ready to leave for the underground hospital tunnels so we hopped in on it. It was really cool! The tunnels were made for the 2nd World War and inside was one of Dover’s hospitals. I am so thankful that I did not have to spend the war in those tunnels! The tour was only about 15 minutes long which was the perfect amount of time for it! We headed back out in the sunlight and tried to get our bearing. The views from hill were stunning and the weather was perfect as it wasn’t too hot or cold, and the breeze felt good! We looked at the map (which the wind made more difficult than it should have been) and started up to the main castle! (Mom is it a CASTLE not a fort!!!) We walked around the battlements and took in the view. It took quite awhile to make it to the castle because the views were so awesome. I was walking on a hill and noticed a chimney ahead of me, and then realized that the “hill” had a point! I was strolling on a roof of the gunpowder hold!!

When we finally made it to the castle we went through the rooms and exhibits. The furniture was a bit ridiculous. I highly doubt (and my Christies education told me) that the furniture was as crazy as was in the castle. The furniture may have been painted, but not to look like it came from pottery barn kids!! Anyways it was cool and a LOT beiger than I thought I was going to be! Not too shabby for the 12th century and I walked through rooms that Richard the Lionhearted would have been in. That is epic. (Henry VIII and Elizabeth visited the castle too!) We continued to climb the stairs and came out on the roof and the view was even better here! It sprinkled for 30 seconds, but it didn’t matter. The storm clouds added to the ambience!!

After a bit we headed back down, I bought a magnet from the store and we headed over to the Roman lighthouse and the 12th century church (there had been a church there since 1000 A.D!) We wandered around the shell of the lighthouse and Alex and I both made sure to touch it because a person living in the 2nd century AD touched the same stones! Cool! :) (it made me feel better that Al was just as big as a nerd as I am!) We went in to check out the church and that was really pretty! It had been renovated in the 19th century (and is still in use) but it was nice inside and so English! I loved the ceiling and banners hanging from the rafters!

We spotted people walking along the cliffs in the distance when we came out from the church and decided to skip the bronze age boat in the town’s museum (it was a HIKE to get there!) and decided to walk the cliffs instead. We headed back down the hill and asked a really nice man the best way to get there. He gave us directions and we were off! This is when the adventure got a bit more dangerous and adventurous. The quickest way to get there was to follow the road instead of going all the way into the town to pick up the pedestrian trail. We didn’t mind until we got to the road and read the sign that said “No Footpath for ¾ of a mile”. Ok…. We start walking and realized that it was like 474, 55 miles an hour and it was CURVY. There wasn’t any room between the pavement and the dropoff that went into the woods. Alex and I were convinced we were going to get hit. We had to keep crossing the road because of the tight curves (Alex did this reluctantly. I didn’t want to die though so I made him). Somehow we walked on the edge of the highway as cars flew past. Lets just say we were grateful when we made it to the top of the twisting hill.

Ill admit it, by this time we had been hiking up hills for 2.5 hours and I was getting tired. Thankfully the path went down to the cliffs and once they came into view I forgot my jelly legs! The cliffs were stunning and every time we thought we had seen the best of it, we would go a bit farther and would be blown away again! It is one of those places that pictures don’t do it justice. You need the wind, sun and smells to make it awesome. We spent a good 2 hours hiking up the coast and taking in the views. At 4:45 we decided we should head back to the town centre (is that the Brit way of spelling it? I think it may be…. Sorry!) to make the bus. We had been walking up and down hills for 4 hours now and I was really tired. There was no way I was telling Al though!! :) We went back on the trail away from the cliffs this time because the path didn’t go up and down so much. I am glad that we did because the horse fields were there and we got to walk with the horses! We also went in the wheat field, just to say that we had been in one!

We got back to the base of the cliff that we had come in at. Alex saw that there was a path going straight and thought we should try it. I didn’t think it went through to the city centre, but he thought it did and I didn’t want to climb the cliff so I followed him. We got to the end and got mad that it ended but I noticed that it turned and went through some brush. We kept going, turned another corner and saw a thick thicket of trees. Hmmm…. We kept going. I noticed garbage and thought of the bike path in Ashville. Around every corner I was expecting to meet a druggie or something. We didn’t thankfully! I went around the corner and stopped. Crap. Alex wanted to know what was up and I didn’t want to tell him that I was face to face to a cliff about 10 feet tall.

He caught up with me and I was trying to scale it. I stopped, came back down and we seriously debated climbing. We decided to try and Alex went first. He said no and I really wanted to climb it because I didn’t want to go all the back and walk up the cliff. He refused to go up though and I couldn’t go if he wouldn’t. So we headed back. The path was slippery and my Coach trainers were not all terrain footwear and I slipped a little. It wasn’t bad (my legs didn’t hit the ground) and I put my hand down to catch myself. There happened to be a thorn bush the size of the ones in Sleeping Beauty that Philip has to hack through (ok maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration!) but it was BIG. I just thought ow and kept going. When I was out of the thicket and back in the open in the grass path I looked down and saw that there was a thorn in my hand. I pulled it out and kept walking. Then I felt water on my hand and looked down and I was bleeding. My adventure battle wound!

To make a long story short we climbed up the cliff path and I didn’t think I would ever make it. Then we found the real path to the town and followed it down. Down was hard because my legs were jelly!! We made it to the town, found the bus stop and were 15 minutes early for the bus. Score!! I must have bad luck with buses because our bus was 45 minutes late. (the bus to Oxford was late when I went with my parents!). It must just be me! It did come though and we got back to London without any problems. We got to Willesden and Alex stopped to get dinner at a chicken place, and I got Chinese for dinner. I posted photos and went to bed! It was such a fun day!!

Today I need to do work, but this blog post has taken me forever! Im going to sit and do work tonight, tomorrow, Sunday and Monday! Alex leaves on Sunday and I am going to Windsor on Tuesday. Busy Busy!