The next weekend

Despite having worked a full week in between, the next weekend we came up with just as much to see and do. First, I headed in to East London to see my first football (soccer for those antipodean readers) match. It ended up being a League One match (the league below Premier League), just because it was easier to see one of those, and it was also my friend's home team, Leyton Orient. It was certainly an experience. They played Stockport, and lost. There was a very small contingent of Stockport fans there, but what they lacked in numbers, they made up for in volume. The Leyton Orient fans made up for their overwhelming numbers with language. I mean, I swear like a sailor at the best of times, but they put me to shame.

After the game Mil and I went back to her place to collect Matt, before heading out to my place for a BBQ. Although I'd had plenty of meat-cooked-by-fire over the past couple of months, the others had been without for a year. They camped at my place for the night, in readiness for our trip the next day.

The weekend before, we'd stood in the furtherest corner of the South West of the country. Our mission this week was to stand in the furtherest corner of the South East, and also to try and see France. In the end it was no hardship. We headed to Dover (not Devon as we kept calling it from the weekend before, thanks Mil). We were going to the castle, and to see the white cliffs. I think the cliffs were far more spectacular than the castle. I'd suggested the castle based on someone else's recommendations about how good it was. I was far more interested in the secret wartime tunnels that were there than the castle. The castle didn't really have too much information about the place, and it wasn't as informative as others. I still think that Edinburgh Castle has been the best castle I've seen so far, but I digress.

Dover Castle did have the secret wartime tunnels. I know it must seem like we seek out these kinds of places, after the nuclear bunker tour, but really we don't. We didn't know that they were even there until we got there. There's actually 5 tunnels dug into the white cliffs, that were used as the headquarters of the Royal Navy during World War 2. Winston Churchill spent some time there, and Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay was in charge there for many years. Dover is very close to Dunkirk, and was where the evacuation was co-ordinated from. They were actually going to use the tunnels as a nuclear bunker in case of attack during the Cold War, until someone with a few active brain cells realised that chalk wasn't going to keep out radiation.

It's hard to see in the photo above, but the shadowy part just above the horizon is France.

We didn't hang around Dover after we left the castle, apart from to get something to eat and some fuel. There's a lot of castles in that area, so I know I'll be going back sooner or later.