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icepixieOof. So I stayed up until 4:30 last night reading Alias fanfic, and I paid for it by having action-packed spy dreams. Except I think all of the spying might actually have involved Jaye and Eric from Wonderfalls, or at any rate characters from a show that's not Alias. There was something about photographs hidden in a ceiling and evil grandparents and someone getting nearly run over by a bus, and there was a lot of running around and jumping off buildings and climbing into underground tunnels.
*
So I caught the train from Exeter to London, where I had to get from Paddington to Victoria to get my train out to Dover. The tube was having a meltdown that day, so this was easier said than done, but I did make my train with time enough to spare to get a pasty for lunch, so all was good. Thank God for the Central line.
Dover holds a commanding lead in the "Ugliest City I Have Ever Seen" contest. This is undoubtedly because it got bombed to smithereens during WWII, and was rebuilt almost entirely with big, immediate postwar-era concrete boxes. It is ugly. It is also actively hostile towards pedestrians. I promise never to take the nice pedestrianized downtowns of places like Exeter for granted again after this one. The beach area was sorely lacking as well, mostly because almost the entire thing was taken up by the port. It was interesting to view a working port, though; I had no idea that the ferries to Calais were so huge. Those things are almost as big as cruise ships, seriously. And the port itself is a massive conglomeration of concrete and steel, with a giant tarmac for loading cars, semis, and people onto the ferries, and big berths for the ferries themselves. The beach was pretty much all rock, and apparently you can't swim in it at all, because of the ferries. Not that I would want to go swimming anyway, and certainly not in the weather I had--cloudy and cold. How I wished I'd brought my coat.
The castle was...okay. I've determined that the National Trust does a much better job managing these properties than English Heritage. NT puts stuff in period-appropriate arrangements and has laminated sheets explaining it all, then leaves it alone; EH does cheesy things with strobe lights and sound effects. The castle is huge, though, so once you got away from the central area, there was a lot to just walk around and see and take pictures of. And of course there were the Secret War Tunnels, used from the Napoleonic Wars through the Cold War, though set up to look as they did in WWII. They only let you go down on a tour, because of yet more sound and light effects. These were better than the "Siege of 1216 Experience," though. The first level was a hospital area, where they took people who got shot down over the English Channel. They had "bloodied" sheets and cotton balls, the smell of antiseptic everywhere, and lights that blinked on and off as the area was bombed. The sound effects basically told the story of a wounded pilot being brought in for treatment. Somewhat gruesome, but interesting all the same. The second level was neater; this was the command center area, from where Vice Admiral Ramsey planned and pulled off the evacuation from Dunkirk. No sound effects, and you could go at your own pace.
I'd seen all there was to see by that point, so I had some tea in the "WWII tea bar" just outside the tunnels. The room reminded me of the Caples bathrooms, with white cinderblock walls and the same shade of dark red on the concrete floor. Oof. I finished my tea and moved out to this sort of enclosed terrace area above the meeting place for the tours, where no one seemed interested in going. It had a few tables and some vaguely comfortable chairs, and a big window that looked over the Channel. I probably spent a good two hours there getting some reading done and listening to the big band music they were playing downstairs. And staying out of the rain, which was a big plus, especially as I'd gotten completely soaked in a big gullywasher that poured down as I was getting to the castle that morning.
I took a walk along the white cliffs, which are quite impressive, although walking on them meant I didn't get to see very much of them, but there's not exactly a beach to walk along the bottom of them anywhere near Dover, apparently, and I walked about two miles along the trail looking for a place to go down and get a better view. Nothing doing. I walked all the way to the historic lighthouse on the cliffs, but of course by the time I'd gotten there, it was closed. Ah, well. The wind turned on me as I was walking back, and it was somewhat less pleasant than walking out, but at least more of it was downhill.
I continued my WWII tour by going to Chartwell, Winston Churchill's family home, the next day. It was perhaps not worth four hours, but lovely all the same. It's nice to see a house furnished in the style of the 1920s and 1930s after all the Georgian- and Regency-era homes we've been seeing all year. There was a breakfast room that I coveted quite a lot. And the gardens were lovely; all the roses were in bloom, and they smelled fantastic. Traveline came through for me again with trains and busses; I continue to be amazed at busses that actually run on time, or for that matter, show up at all. (I clearly remember several cold winter mornings where the city bus-turned-school bus I rode in middle and high school simply didn't bother to come down my street. No warning. No explanation. No apology. I continue to nurse a grudge against MTA.)
I finished off my Kent tour with Leeds Castle, which calls itself the loveliest castle in the world. It's at least one of the prettiest, anyway. It's on an island in the middle of a moat you could almost call a lake, and there are extensive grounds and gardens as well. Plus swans, both black and white, geese, and various species of ducks all over the place. They had a falconry demonstration that was very cool, and included a European owl that was simply gorgeous. It was a very sleepy owl, but very pretty.
One thing I really liked about the whole area was the amount of trees they have. There are, like, no trees out here. Certainly not as many as I'm used to at home (Tennessee is 55% forest). Kent has trees! Big leafy ones! All over the place! Hills covered in trees that go all blue and misty in the morning! There was a big wall of green around the back yard of my hostel in Dover. Very pretty.
So, yeah. That was Kent. I took lots of pictures, which I will upload at some point when I get off this Alias fanfic bender (courtesy of the fine folks at Aequabilis).
*
So I caught the train from Exeter to London, where I had to get from Paddington to Victoria to get my train out to Dover. The tube was having a meltdown that day, so this was easier said than done, but I did make my train with time enough to spare to get a pasty for lunch, so all was good. Thank God for the Central line.
Dover holds a commanding lead in the "Ugliest City I Have Ever Seen" contest. This is undoubtedly because it got bombed to smithereens during WWII, and was rebuilt almost entirely with big, immediate postwar-era concrete boxes. It is ugly. It is also actively hostile towards pedestrians. I promise never to take the nice pedestrianized downtowns of places like Exeter for granted again after this one. The beach area was sorely lacking as well, mostly because almost the entire thing was taken up by the port. It was interesting to view a working port, though; I had no idea that the ferries to Calais were so huge. Those things are almost as big as cruise ships, seriously. And the port itself is a massive conglomeration of concrete and steel, with a giant tarmac for loading cars, semis, and people onto the ferries, and big berths for the ferries themselves. The beach was pretty much all rock, and apparently you can't swim in it at all, because of the ferries. Not that I would want to go swimming anyway, and certainly not in the weather I had--cloudy and cold. How I wished I'd brought my coat.
The castle was...okay. I've determined that the National Trust does a much better job managing these properties than English Heritage. NT puts stuff in period-appropriate arrangements and has laminated sheets explaining it all, then leaves it alone; EH does cheesy things with strobe lights and sound effects. The castle is huge, though, so once you got away from the central area, there was a lot to just walk around and see and take pictures of. And of course there were the Secret War Tunnels, used from the Napoleonic Wars through the Cold War, though set up to look as they did in WWII. They only let you go down on a tour, because of yet more sound and light effects. These were better than the "Siege of 1216 Experience," though. The first level was a hospital area, where they took people who got shot down over the English Channel. They had "bloodied" sheets and cotton balls, the smell of antiseptic everywhere, and lights that blinked on and off as the area was bombed. The sound effects basically told the story of a wounded pilot being brought in for treatment. Somewhat gruesome, but interesting all the same. The second level was neater; this was the command center area, from where Vice Admiral Ramsey planned and pulled off the evacuation from Dunkirk. No sound effects, and you could go at your own pace.
I'd seen all there was to see by that point, so I had some tea in the "WWII tea bar" just outside the tunnels. The room reminded me of the Caples bathrooms, with white cinderblock walls and the same shade of dark red on the concrete floor. Oof. I finished my tea and moved out to this sort of enclosed terrace area above the meeting place for the tours, where no one seemed interested in going. It had a few tables and some vaguely comfortable chairs, and a big window that looked over the Channel. I probably spent a good two hours there getting some reading done and listening to the big band music they were playing downstairs. And staying out of the rain, which was a big plus, especially as I'd gotten completely soaked in a big gullywasher that poured down as I was getting to the castle that morning.
I took a walk along the white cliffs, which are quite impressive, although walking on them meant I didn't get to see very much of them, but there's not exactly a beach to walk along the bottom of them anywhere near Dover, apparently, and I walked about two miles along the trail looking for a place to go down and get a better view. Nothing doing. I walked all the way to the historic lighthouse on the cliffs, but of course by the time I'd gotten there, it was closed. Ah, well. The wind turned on me as I was walking back, and it was somewhat less pleasant than walking out, but at least more of it was downhill.
I continued my WWII tour by going to Chartwell, Winston Churchill's family home, the next day. It was perhaps not worth four hours, but lovely all the same. It's nice to see a house furnished in the style of the 1920s and 1930s after all the Georgian- and Regency-era homes we've been seeing all year. There was a breakfast room that I coveted quite a lot. And the gardens were lovely; all the roses were in bloom, and they smelled fantastic. Traveline came through for me again with trains and busses; I continue to be amazed at busses that actually run on time, or for that matter, show up at all. (I clearly remember several cold winter mornings where the city bus-turned-school bus I rode in middle and high school simply didn't bother to come down my street. No warning. No explanation. No apology. I continue to nurse a grudge against MTA.)
I finished off my Kent tour with Leeds Castle, which calls itself the loveliest castle in the world. It's at least one of the prettiest, anyway. It's on an island in the middle of a moat you could almost call a lake, and there are extensive grounds and gardens as well. Plus swans, both black and white, geese, and various species of ducks all over the place. They had a falconry demonstration that was very cool, and included a European owl that was simply gorgeous. It was a very sleepy owl, but very pretty.
One thing I really liked about the whole area was the amount of trees they have. There are, like, no trees out here. Certainly not as many as I'm used to at home (Tennessee is 55% forest). Kent has trees! Big leafy ones! All over the place! Hills covered in trees that go all blue and misty in the morning! There was a big wall of green around the back yard of my hostel in Dover. Very pretty.
So, yeah. That was Kent. I took lots of pictures, which I will upload at some point when I get off this Alias fanfic bender (courtesy of the fine folks at Aequabilis).
