DOVER - Fri. July 12

            When I woke up this morning I could see the White Cliffs of Dover out through my balcony door. Alas – no bluebirds over them, but Vera Lynn stayed with me all morning.  There were however lots of very large seagulls soaring about above fishing boats in the harbour. They are very large seagulls as we later saw one on the ground in Dover. Almost as big as a small hen. Dover Castle high above dominated the port as it has done since Roman times and the days of William the Conqueror. I can understand why Dover has always been on the invasion route for armies from the Continent.

            Ship’s tours to London left shortly after our arrival at 7am. That will be another long day. About 10.30 we took the local shuttle bus – which turned out to be an old sky blue double decker – into Dover. At first we were disappointed as the first street we took from the shuttle was decrepit with a few very old and dilapidated buildings, which were probably fine looking in their day with wide stone window sills and door frames.

            The main street turned out to be a mall – wide, with ceramic tiles instead of cobblestones down the middle. Lots of people and no vehicles.  Bright looking shops and quite a variety.  Much more as I had expected the City of Dover to look.

There were several Churches with the look of antiquity in their stone walls, and the story of the special bell donated by the King of Belgium in gratitude after the War.  In the small square outside the Town Hall there was a monument to those from Dover who died in Great War, 1914-18.           

The familiar yellow arches of MacDonalds called us and we had a coffee and snack there as it was warm and they took Euros as well as Pounds. Ah – we thought – Dover is a place that caters to European visitors. Sensible. Broadminded. Their change from Bruce’s Euros however was in Stirling pence which he donated to a young man on the street with a donations bucket for some charity. A few minutes later Bruce tried to buy a second hand novel which took his eye in a Charity shop and they surprised us by refusing his one Euro payment. There you are. You can never tell.

So we didn’t go to see The Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey or any of the other places ship’s tours took people to see. Not even the nearby Canterbury Cathedral. We had visited all these a few years ago when we did a month ‘home swap’ on the outskirts of London. So we just went to see Dover.

On the way back to the ship in the Shuttle Bus we saw how old some of the port buildings were looking: an old disused train line and station; old warehouses and run down buildings. This reminded us of the centuries that Dover has been importing and exporting. From the top balcony of Sea Princess we could see across the bay a constant turn-around of modern Channel Vehicle Ferries, and always ships on the horizon in the busy shipping lanes of the English Channel.