Two castles in one day!

Saturday 28^th September

After a delicious breakfast we walked along Marine Parade to the Brighton Pier and then had another wander through ‘The Lanes’ and the ‘Laines’ too. We then set off for Dover and Howard our GPS took us inland when I expected that he’d take us along the coast. I suggested that seeing we’d be going through Sissinghurst we should visit the Vita Sackville-West gardens at Sissinghurst Castle today instead of tomorrow. I loved it but Andrew was not so impressed…here are some photos of the tower and gardens…

The tower was built in the 1560’s…we climbed the 78 steps to the top and on the way up we looked into Vita Sackville-West’s personal study where she did most of her writing.

Just a small section of the view from the top of the tower out over the estate.

The gardens are set out in ‘rooms’ each very different in their planting scheme, colours and scent…here’s a sample…

Next stop Dover, where we spent the afternoon at Dover Castle…we headed straight for the Secret Wartime Tunnels which were carved into the white cliffs under the Castle: first we joined a 20 minute tour of The Underground Hospital and then the deeper tunnels for the one hour Operation Dynamo...Rescue from Dunkirk tour.

Both tours were AMAZING…the tours are immersive with special smell, light and sound effects that are designed to help you understand the dramatic rescue of the BEF from Dunkirk.

It was almost closing time so we then visited the Great Tower of Dover Castle…

The throne room

Henry the 2^nd’s bedroom

The kitchens

Again we were one of the last to leave…we decided to visit the town centre and find somewhere to have dinner…we drove around in circles for quite some time and gave up! We drove to our hotel and decided to eat in the restaurant here…we were very pleasantly surprised and think we’ll have breakfast here in the morning too.

Our room is very spacious with a King sized bed & a great view of Dover Harbour, which is very busy with ferries continuously arriving from and leaving for Calais, France…it’s only 18 miles away!

On our drive today we listened to Graham Norton…he has a regular Saturday 3 hour time slot on BBC Radio 2…he was hilarious…we love his TV show that airs on Sunday nights where he interviews amazing people and finishes off with his ‘stories from the red chair segment’. Today on his radio program he interviewed someone who is appearing on the English version of ‘Dancing With The Stars’…the 2013 season debuted tonight and we watched the first part of it…Bruce Forsyth is the host and the staging, judging panel and EVERYTHING is done the same way…it must be a franchise.

Tonight we're sending a special message to Aunty Von...she's a big fan of our blog and is in hospital at the moment...luckily she has her ipad with her and is able to access the blog. We're thinking of you Aunty Von and hope that you're feeling much better very soon xxx