A family weekend in Dover Castle, or nearly: we were in the Sergeant Major's house and M+J were in Peverell's Tower. Both are within the outer ramparts and very close to the castle itself. Of the two, Pev's tower is distinctly cuter - its 13th century, pretty spacious for two and has a great roof terrace. SM's is "merely" Georgian, sleeps 6 (us, D+E, and Si+B). Again, spacious (there was an entire table-tennis and living room in the basement that we barely used) but not as much fun as the tower. Decor all fine, and has the glorious property of all holiday lets: its both empty and clean when you arrive.
Friday
E wants to go to Easter Bingo at school, so we end up leaving just after 8. A fairly painless drive down sees us at the castle around 10:30. The drawbridge is down but the huge wooden gates are shut; fortunately a bod is on hand to open them. So we drive in, and end up at the top, just outside the inner keep entrance. At which point we don't really know where we're going, since we (characteristically) haven't done our homework. Phone Mfd, but he's rather hazy on the site layout (it all becomes much clearer in the morning; when stuck, we were about 1 mins drive drive from where we wanted, but we chose the 5 mins round-about route). Unpack, kids straight up to bed, we chat.
Saturday
Its a bitterly cold day, and everyone sleeps in. I think I get up around 10ish, wander down for breakfast crumpets and coffee. Broadly that's how the day goes: mostly an indoors day. E goes to look at Pev's tower. E and M have a game of ping-pong downstairs (M stuffs E). Mfd, Si+B and I go up to look at the castle: first up and round, to the roman lighthouse (I never knew there was a roman lighthouse on top of Dover, but indeed there is, and very ancient it looks, most of 2 kyr old now) and the Saxon St Mary de Castro(which latter I think is very ugly). Then into the inner keep or "Great Tower". This looks dead impressive from outside, as it was intended to, though inside it is really little more than four rooms (I exaggerate, or rather minimise, for effect). It reminds me strongly of Castle Rising Castle, especially the way the entrance stairs wrap around and put you in at the top level. CRC is more beautiful - they had better stone - but also I saw it on a better day. Like CRC, it has passages in the walls and lovely stairs. English Heritage have sort-of decked it out as "how it might have been when Henry II was welcoming visitors" but it isn't too convincing - lacks detail and depth - the attraction is the building, not what they've done with it. Views from the top are great but the thin snow and the cold wind keep us from gazing for long.Late pm: E starts game of Risk with M, Si. I go down to town to buy more bread and crumpets, and because it would be a shame not to see Dover at all. I've left it late - nearly 5 - and things are shutting. Dover looks like times are hard. I end up in a Morrisons. There's quite a decent pedestrian way from the Castle down to the town, and a lovely old ruined church at the bottom. Dinner: roast beef and spinach.
Sunday
Wake somewhat earlier - 9 ish - and I'm about the first up. E, and then surprisingly D, soon after (D has been sick recently. He was off school last Friday, and again last Tuesday, and was driven to school in between; he's still not tip-top).I go for a walk around the ramparts before the others are around; I rather feel that I should have done more yesterday. However 5 minutes outside soon cure my of any ideals, and I'm hunching up against the still-bitter wind. Pic: from the Avranches tower, a wintry scene, empty snail shells piled up. In the arrow-slit next door there was a huge mass of hibernating snails. I did look for the "medaeival tunnels" but they seemed closed - that link suggests that they usually are. And so on round, clockwise. Now I understand the shape of the site better I realise its not quite as big as I thought it was; I get down to the cliff face, find the "secret tunnels" bit, get onto the balcony overlooking the container port (the tunnels cut into the cliff were once barracks for the other-ranks, the officers got a fine building up top; then abandoned; then used and expanded during WWII especially for "operation dynamo" the rescue from Dunkirk. So the area has a WWII feel to it, in stark contrast to the Henry II feel of the rest, and poke around inside a bit. But that way you only get shallowly into the tunnels; to go deeper you need to do the tour.
Back, take D and E up to see the castle. They are moderately but not very interested; would be better in better weather.
Lunch, then again a few of us (not D+E) go to see the tunnels; its a 50-min tour, and they sort-of string it out by using it to tell the story of the outbreak of the war, and projecting the tale of operation dynamo onto the walls. it works fairly well, but again (as in at the castle itself) they're fairly thin on real stuff to look at.
And so tea time, another game of Risk (I win, or Si does, depending on how you score an interrupted game), D does his homework, and we leave just before 7 and get back just after 9.
Niggles
I suppose I should throw in a few. You see my top pic, with the union jack flying bravely in the wind? Well, at about 2 Hz the rope was tapping against the flagpole, making a little noise, barely audible usually, but clearly audible in the otherwise silent middle of the night (so on the plus side, you're well above the traffic and noise of Dover, which you don't hear at all). At 7 am on Sunday the fire alarm decided to go off for no reason. They aren't desperately generous with the cutlery - if you have guests from Pev's tower coming over, you'll run out of knives.
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