Day Trip to Dover and Canterbury

We’ve spent so much time in London that it was time to get out and “see the countryside” so we decided to make a day trip to Dover to see the castle and the famous white cliffs. It was only about a two hour drive from Richmond, but we got up early and left at 8 to make the most of the day.

Our first stop was Dover Castle and the underground wartime tunnel system in the cliffs below it. 

(Remember you can click on the pictures to see them larger.)

The tunnels were immense and very impressive and were primarily used during WWII.  There was a fascinating presentation there about the evacuation of British and French soldiers from Dunkerque, France after France fell to the Germans.  It was a monumental effort which rescued almost half a million people and used all sorts of watercraft to bring them across the English Channel.


After a bite of lunch, we hiked UP to the castle which is really, really well preserved and presented. 

They even had an actor roaming around posing as the king.  The castle rooms was very accessible and livable – all set up for a banquet and you kind of felt like you had really walked into a living, breathing castle rather than an historic monument. 

Best castle I’ve visited – so real.  You could wander around, touch things, talk to the king, and take pictures. 

We climbed up to the very top and were rewarded with beautiful views from the ramparts.  Of course, the weather cooperated – it was a spectacularly beautiful day.  It was hard to pull ourselves away.

From the castle we drove the short distance over to a vantage point for viewing the white cliffs.  They are made of white chalk and are beautiful, especially as seen against a nice blue sea.  There was also a very active, busy shipping port at the bottom which fascinated the guys.

We headed out of Dover to Canterbury.  My objective was to attend the evensong service at 5:30 in Canterbury Cathedral (and Larry, Deb and Bob agreed to the plan).  This seemed more appropriate than just touring another cathedral.  When we got there we had about an hour before the service, so we had a nice walk through town and raised a pint at a nearby pub before going to the service.  Canterbury is a lovely little town.

Since it was summer, the lovely boys choir was on holiday, but a visiting choir filled in nicely and the service was brief and very enjoyable.  During the service one totally clueless woman tourist walked in and starting filming it with her phone.  I thought the priests were going to have a heart attack.  Everyone was quite aghast but no one did anything.  Eventually she bored of it and wandered off.

After the service (6:30) we headed for home.  Unfortunately, we ran into a major traffic issue on the M25.  An accident involving a truck going through the median caused them to totally close the highway between exit 7 and 8 which created a complete traffic nightmare in the area.  We were forced off at exit 7 and crawled along side roads for a while and finally decided around 8:30 that we had better stop and eat dinner or things would be closed.  We were only 22 miles from “home” and traffic was a little better after dinner going in our direction but when we got back on M25 at exit 8, we saw a huge backup going in the opposite direction.  We read later that it eventually became a 28 mile backup.  ( We saw signs that the road was still closed the next morning when we headed to the airport to drop off Deb and Bob.  Now there is an on-going investigation into why it took so long to re-open the road.)  It was after 11 when we finally made it home.  Phew – long day, but very fun.