A tour round the Garden of England - Part 3

The next leg in our grand tour took us from Canterbury to Folkestone, via Dover

We had seen on the TV News that the National Trust had just opened the Fan Bay Shelter tunnels - so we decided to pay them a visit

The tunnels and gun battery were built by the Royal Engineers between 20 November 1940 and 28 February 1941

The complex originally included five large chambers with storage space for rifles, a hospital and a secure store, a generator, toilets and washrooms. The gun battery was intended to attack enemy shipping moving through the English Channel. The tunnels were abandoned and later rediscovered by the National Trust who completed restoration work and opened them to the public on 20 July 2015

The shelter was built along with a gun battery sited just 21.5 miles from France after Churchill visited Dover in July 1940 and was enraged to watch through binoculars enemy shipping moving freely in the English Channel. In a memo to the Joint Chief of Staff he said: “We must insist upon maintaining superior artillery positions on the Dover promontory, no matter what form of attack they are exposed to. We have to fight for command of the straits by artillery, to destroy the enemy batteries and fortify our own.” By 10 December the battery and still incomplete shelter were garrisoned by four officers and 118 men from the 203rd Coast Battery of the Royal Artillery relocated from Falmouth, and personally inspected by Churchill the following June

Our guide for the morning telling us about the Sound Mirrors

These were used to detect the sound from aircraft engines

The South Foreland Lighthouse - which warned shipping of the quicksands that are called Goodwin Sands

View of St Margaret's Bay from the lighthouse. In the early twentieth century, the Dover region and specifically the village of St Margaret’s-At-Cliffe established a reputation as an attractive, secluded London getaway. St Margaret's became increasingly popular with well-known, wealthy people who made their homes here or bought summer lodges

The playwright, actor and novelist, Noel Coward lived here from 1945-1951. He sold it to Ian Fleming - author of James Bond novels and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. 

Fleming was so inspired by the dramatic White Cliffs of Dover and the picturesque surrounding region that he used the region as the setting for the Bond novel Moonraker. The 1955 classic is the only Bond novel to take place solely in Britain and Fleming enjoyed using his beloved Dover as the location. The villain of the novel, Hugo Drax, has built his Moonraker rocket just outside of Dover, near the seaside town of Deal. The 1979 Bond movie is not set in Kent however. The film bears little resemblance to Fleming’s novel and the movie is set in the United States, Italy and the Amazon rainforest!

Fleming also used South-East Kent as the location for his other beloved creation: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The car famously flies to the Goodwin Sands where the Potts family enjoy a picnic in the middle of the English Channel.

An interesting (to me, anyway) piece of trivia is that the National Express coach service from Victoria to Deal is numbered 007

For more photos of our time on the White Cliffs click White Cliffs of Dover

Then on to Dover Castle

including the Great Tower

We could easily have spent a lot longer at the Castle - but the weather was closing in and we needed to get to our Folkestone campsite

For more photos of the castle click Dover Castle

A tour round the Garden of England - Part 2

Moving on from Whitstable we headed towards our next stopover in Canterbury - where we would spend two nights.

However, we took the scenic route, via Broadstairs

A quiet resort - at least whilst we were there 

With plenty of references to Charles Dickens - who often visited the place when writing some of his novels

This one is The Old Curiosity Shop

Then onto Canterbury, where we visited the Castle

... and the famous Cathedral

We also walked around the remains of St Augustine's Abbey

We also cycled along the Great Stour Way - part of the National Cycle Network

We cycled from Canterbury to the village of Chartham

Apparently you can take a punt for some of the way

This train is heading for London Victoria - note the wooden signal box, which was built in the 1880s

For more photos of our time here click Canterbury

A tour round the Garden of England - Part 1

We have recently returned from a tour around Kent - the Garden of England. Luckily we managed to avoid the traffic queues that have been plaguing the county.

A birthday treat from our younger son was the key reason to go south for ten days.

He had bought us tickets to see this splendid production of The Railway Children at the King's Cross Theatre - complete with a real steam train! Needless to say, I was enthralled throughout.

We also went to the 38th floor of the Heron Tower for some spectacular views across London before setting off to Kent.

The Historic Dockyard in Chatham was our first port of call. We envisaged that we would spend a couple of hours here...

... but there was so much to see and we were having a great time ... that it was almost six hours later before we left for our overnight campsite in Whitstable. 

From 1547 Chatham Royal Dockyard provided over 500 ships for the Royal Navy, and was at the forefront of shipbuilding, industrial and architectural technology. At its height, it employed over 10,000 skilled workers. Chatham dockyard closed in 1984, and is now managed as a visitor attraction by the Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust.

The covered slips formed the industrial heart of the dockyard in the age of sailing ships. Although some ships were built in dry docks, most were constructed on slipways which sloped into the river - this impressive cantilevered frame was built in 1838 

This submarine was used in the James Bond film The World is Not Enough

The Commissioner's Garden

There were three ships to walk through - the HMS Gannet; built in 1878

HMS Cavalier, a 1944 destroyer

and the HM Submarine Ocelot, built in 1962

Over the years, Chatham Dockyard has become a popular location for filming due to its varied and interesting areas such as the cobbled streets, church and over 100 buildings dating from the Georgian and Victorian periods. 

Productions that have chosen to film at Chatham Dockyard include: Les Misérables, Call the Midwife, Mr Selfridge, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, Foyle’s War and, as previously mentioned, The World is Not Enough

I thought I had also found The Doctor's Tardis - but he wasn't in!

For more photos of our time in Chatham click  Chatham Historic Dockyard

And so to our first overnight stop in Kent ...

... the fishing port of Whitstable - famous for its oysters

We wondered what these structures were - I have since discovered that they are the Maunsell Forts which were small fortified towers built in the Thames and Medway estuaries during the Second World War to help defend the Country. They were operated as army and navy forts, and named after their designer, Guy Maunsell. The forts were decommissioned in the late 1950s and later used for other activities including pirate radio broadcasting

We sampled some of the local Whitstable Bay ale before retiring for the night