I captured the castle

Roman light house in background

Today I beat all the other tourists up to the top of Dover Castle and declare all I can see to be named Roscoville from this day forward.

Dover Castle is strategically placed on a hill top only 22 miles across the channel from France. It is a great walk back in time starting with an iron age hill fort right up until 9 centuries later in the 1980s when the tunnels are used as a nuclear bunker hideout for the government.

After capturing the castle I move onto checking out all aspects of the castle and learning about Henry II and his sons and how they squabbled and fought over England and France. Now the medieval tunnels and when turning around to do photos I promptly get disorientated and cant figure the way out. After a while I hear some school kids and figure out where the exit is. Its so windy up here on top of the hill but I brave on and tackle the battlements and am rewarded with great views of the white cliffs and the big seaport below.

Its amazing to walk in the footsteps of so many different parts of history that have happened on this site, the Romans in 43AD, William the Conquer after the Battle of Hastings, through to the French sieges in the Napoleonic wars and finally the Operation Dynamo to evacuate from Dunkirk in WW2.

Entering the wartime tunnels where the planning and communications where done for Dunkirk evacuation and D day is like entering a labyrinth, there are passages and side rooms everywhere. With smart use of projections and videos onto the side walls the story of Dunkirk is told by Paul our guide in such a realistic way I get goose bumps.

At the end of the tour Paul and I have a chat about Vice Admiral Ramsay who ran the operations. Then Paul goes and finds some binoculars so I can see France, alas there is too much cloud on the horizon and I can’t make out the land. Paul tells a story about Winston Churchill who during the Battle of Britain with powerful binoculars could see a town clock on the other side of the channel and complained that the clock was 5 minutes slow.

Next I do the hospital tunnels tour, these tunnels look similar but have a different tale to tell as we follow the story of a pilot shot down over the channel with leg injuries. The tour is again very realistic and they have smells pumping through different parts of the tunnel as well, beef stew in the canteen and antiseptic in the operating theatre.

Final part for me to visit now is the Saxon church and Roman lighthouse, my Roman obsession just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Mostly thanks to Time Team, the best show ever. Mick Ashton who was the senior archeologist on most of the digs passed away suddenly last week. It is thanks to him and the team that so many people have the archeology bug now.

The Roman lighthouse would show boats how to get to England from Europe, I have never seen one of these before and did not even know they existed.

The layers of history here are amazing, glad I picked this castle to visit as its strategic position as an entry point to England have made it an important part of history.

Time to walk back down the hill and check out Dover. The seagulls are the size of eagles and make a hell of a racket. Now I know where all the sound effects in the TV series Foyles War come from. Dover itself has an excellent small museum with a bronze age boat. The boat was found in 1992 and is 3,550 years older that Tutankhamen. Now that’s old. 

Also check out Shakespeares Leap, a cliff used in the play King Lear. Finally time to follow the signs written in English and French back to the train. I think the French writing is for an invasion of a different kind, tourists. There are French school kids everywhere. As I head back to London the lush green countryside races by the window.