2011 May 2 Castles and English Channel

[David and Susan Bratt]

After a few more days showing Emily our favorite spots in London, we put her on the Underground to Heathrow and returned to Rover late at night, the buses now blessedly running all the way to the campground. The next day we drove to Canterbury, stopping along the way at Leed’s Castle at Maidstone.

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The 500 acres around the castle were impressively gardened, but the castle itself was quite modernized, having been lived in until 1974. We then drove to Canterbury, skirting just outside the medieval walls and through four traffic circles, one close on to the next, finally arriving at the campground just outside the city.

Like some of the others, this one had gravel pitches (sites) on a large field. It was very spacious. Many people who use caravans (trailers) also put up an awning room attached to the trailer, so the campgrounds often allow quite a bit of space between sites. And again there were no outlets in the bathrooms and a 20p charge for using the hairdryer! This seems to be the scheme in England. Because Susan has a 230-volt European hairdryer, she is unable to use it in Rover. We gave some European camping books to an Australian couple next to us who had rented a van for 6 months and seemed not to have done a lot of planning or research (can you hear our ‘tsk, tsk’?).

The next day we took a bus into the city and, because nobody else had signed up that morning, had a private tour of the cathedral with an enthusiastic women who made sure we knew the entire Thomas Becket story, down to the number and location of the wounds inflicted by Henry’s knights. The place was quite busy with school children of all ages, some in monks’ costumes and others speaking French.

On Wednesday we drove to Folkestone on the coast, stopping at a Battle of Britain museum housed at what is left of a WWII airfield that had sent hundreds of flights off to France. It is full of Spitfires and Hurricanes and pieces of the planes recovered from beaches and farm fields over the years. We were not allowed to take any photographs. It also has the stories of many of the 554 RAF fighter pilots who didn’t return, as well as newspaper clippings from 1940, asserting that an invasion was expected in the next 72 hours. (There is also a cartoon of Napoleon standing on the French coast with Hitler, saying, “Yes, this is as far as I got, too.”) Places like these are always a sobering experience, and it is good to see someone keeping these stories alive.

From there we drove to our Folkestone campsite on the scariest road yet. The campsite is in a breathtaking location, with the English Channel on one side and the white cliffs of Dover rising on the other. We were close enough to see France and hear the waves breaking. But to get to the site we had to drive 1/2 mile on what felt like a farm lane, lined with hedges, all downhill with no room for passing. We are hoping we won’t scrape bottom and lose a tank or two on the way out. Incoming campers are not supposed to arrive until after noon, so we have been assured that we will not meet anyone as we drive back out if we leave before noon.

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It has been disconcerting to find that in England it seems to be necessary to book campsites ahead of time. On the Continent we had never made reservations, and the two times we did find a campground full they still found a place for us. And when we have called ahead here, we have been surprised at how often places are full. So we are spending a lot of our downtime trying to plan ahead a few days (or, in the case of Bank holidays, even weeks). This means that we have to know why we are going somewhere days ahead, what we want to see, and how long we need to stay. This has not been our style of travel. As a further complication, we bought a couple more campground books in London--bringing us up to six--each with its own way of listing sites (we are rapidly learning the names of England’s counties, if not their locations). Fortunately, we do have a phone that works in England, but the campsite in Folkestone is beyond the signal for phone or wifi, which is of no help at all.