12 July 2013 Dover

We sailed into Dover this morning, one always thinks of the wartime song The White Cliffs of Dover by Vera Lynn, I had always wanted to do this, we had been to Dover but not quite the same as sailing into the port, not a particularly pretty port mind you, I think it is not what it once was.  There is a castle on the hill, one of the girls from my abs class walked up to see it but she did not go thru it.  We joined our tour, a very intimate tour indeed, only half of one bus, we are in the habit of going with 20 or more busloads so this was very different.   Our guide was a nice chap, very informative. We drove to Leeds Castle, it was begun in1056 ish, many owners particularly wives of kings, Catherine of Aragon being one of them, we went thru her bedroom.  There have been many restorations but the thread that ran thru this was the restorations always broke the owners and they had to sell on. The last owner was a Lady Baillie, she had had three husbands, she loved Leeds and restored it, she passed away in 1974 and bequeathed it to the state so it could be used and enjoyed by future generations, she was a very interesting woman.  There has been a G8 meeting there, among other things very noteworthy international meetings.  It is used for weddings etc and the weekend before we were there, there was a wedding between an American and an Englishman which went on for three days, one of the guides was telling us this.  After a walk back thru the lovely gardens we rejoined our bus to drive to on to  Canterbury, our guide let us go on our own to see the Cathedral, now this is something, one really needed a full day for this, bit like Salisbury Cathedral, you need a day for that too.  Anyway we did our best, it is just amazing to be standing there in the midst of all that history.  We then had a drive back home thru some very pretty little towns, Sandwich, Deal and others, the driver did a great job of getting thru the streets as they are only as wide as a bus.  We arrived back at 5.00ish, 700 passengers had disembarked that morning and 800 newies had embarked, you do miss the ones who got away so to speak.  Sam says everyone will be bored to tears he would have kept this to 10 lines, lots of love Sabine and Sam XXX