{"id":6779,"date":"2023-02-12T23:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-12T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.karenandjon.co.uk\/blog\/?p=6779"},"modified":"2025-10-31T18:40:21","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T18:40:21","slug":"kent-day-2-dover-castle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hweb.uk\/?p=6779","title":{"rendered":"Kent – Day 2: Dover Castle"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sunday 12th February 2023<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Spoilt for choice with places to see and visit but we opted to go to Dover Castle. To get there was an interesting drive to say the least. Very narrow country lanes to navigate and hope you don’t meet anything big coming the other way!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The castle is sited up high on the cliffs overlooking Dover and the docks. Quite a climb [in the car] to get to the castle and it was already pretty busy. There wasn’t a huge amount of car parking spaces left and we were directed to park in front of an old house. Dover Castle is an English Heritage site and we had made sure we remembered our membership cards, saving the \u00a355 entry fee for a family.<\/p>\n\n\n

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First stop was the Officers Mess for brunch – sausage rolls! they we headed down to the tunnels to start exploring the castle. We joined the queue for the Military Hospital – these tunnels acted as a hospital then an assessment ward during WW2. The equipment and furniture inside was all original (coated with a protective coating to stop everything rotting and going mouldy). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tunnels had dehumidifiers running everything – without these the guide told us we would all be sweating buckets just stood here. There was no ventilation at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We were being taken around the hospital following the admission of a Mosquito pilot who had been shot down in the Channel. We were only seeing a fraction of the tunnels (4 miles in total) and were taken through the kitchens, mess hall, dormitories, wards, operating theatre all kitted out as per 1943. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One thing the guide did tell us to imagine – 80% of the population smoked in those days so when people went to relax and enjoy downtime in the mess room, remember this is where everyone would be smoking so would be difficult to wind down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All really interesting … just a climb up the double-helix spiral staircase to climb to get back out. The exit was close to the statue of Admiral Ramsey overlooking the Channel. He was responsible for planning the Dunkirk Evacuations which was done at Dover.<\/p>\n<\/div>

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Close by was the WW1 Fire Command Post. The ground floor was controlled by the army and the upper deck by the navy. Some very cool binocular-like equipment on display – the guides in the room said they could ready the time on the town hall clock in Calais the other week … and were watching cyclists cycle along the sea front! Calais was about 21 miles across at this point – the shortest distance between England and France.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The queues for the Dunkirk tunnels were still pretty long at this point so we headed to main part of the castle to explore the Medieval tunnels and the castle itself. The castle itself is huge with various parts rebuilt over time to hold the guns of WW1 and WW2.<\/p>\n\n\n

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