Views from the top

Looking down on Market Place and on to St.Peter's Street and St.Peter's church in the distance

St.Albans Cathedral - looking in to the sun unfortunately

The Peahen junction

Christopher Place shopping centre

Up St.Albans clock tower

Here's the bell in the clock tower - I don't think it has been rung for some time!

At the top - you can see the door to the roof on the right

This is the 'guide' on the roof showing what you can see in each direction - very well done

St.Albans Clock Tower

Recently St.Albans clock tower reopened after a 'spruce up'. I've never climbed the tower so we went along to see what had been done. It's all very smart now with very good information boards.

 Here's the clock itself. Even this seems to have been cleaned up.

 No nice old pennies like on Big Ben's pendulum - just a collection of old washers to ensure it keeps the correct time.

 More of the clock mechanism.

Peonies

Couple of nice peonies in the garden

Caravans and Motorhomes

SWMBO made a very valid observation the other day..."Why are caravans and motorhomes always (usually?) white?"

Yes, surely if they were green for example, they would blend in to the scenery and avoid impacting on beauty spots so much. There's nothing worse than seeing a campsite on a hillside with rows and rows of white caravans. Paint them green!

A Dover church

Here's a couple of nice photos of a derelict church in Dover town.
The church was bombed during the war and the ruins left as a memorial.
I particularly liked the way this doorway had been 'bricked up'.

Dover Castle - final post

I have been contacted by Britain's National Tourism Agency asking if I would like to include a link to their web page about Dover Castle?
"Good idea", I said... Clickety Click here it is!
As I've said many times, I must include more links.

Anglo-Saxon church, St.Mary in Castro (St.Mary in the Castle), and Roman lighthouse - The Pharos

Inside the church - obviously!

We also visited the secret wartime tunnels but no photography was allowed. As I'm being watched by the National Tourism Agency, I'd better not reproduce any of the official photographs here! Anyway, go and have a look yourselves.

Inside Dover Castle

Apparently the displays inside the castle are greatly improved since SWMBO was last there.

The great dining hall.

Even some 'actors' doing their best to bring the castle to life.

Dover town and port

Views from the castle grounds.

Dover Castle

We trudged up the HUGE hill to the castle and spent a couple of hours happily wandering around. SWMBO hadn't been there for years.

The only downside was, as we realised afterwards, that we were given pensioner rates at the admission desk - they didn't feel they needed to ask obviously!

Mind you, after the climb up that hill, we probably did look like we hadn't got many more years left.

This is inside the wartime lookout post.



HS1 to Dover

SWMBO has spent all her life (well, not ALL her life, you know what I mean) travelling to Dover from St.Albans as she has a huge number of relatives there.

"In the old days" this involved catching the train to London and then crossing London by underground or taxi (depending on the amount of luggage they had) to Charing Cross then catching a slow train to Dover.

Now, we catch the train from St.Albans to St.Pancras, change platforms and catch the new HS1 train to Dover. This uses the Eurostar line to Ashford then branches off to travel via Folkestone to Dover. Really comfortable and fast service.

I've never travelled to Dover by train before and was amazed to find that Folkestone has two railway stations - Folkestone West and Folkestone Central. They are very close to one another, and the train stopped at both.

 Very comfortable, clean and quiet.

 Dover Priory station which has recently been refurbished.

Last of the bluebells

On Sunday we went for a walk up to Flamstead (maybe to The Spotted Dog?). On the way we visited Flamsteadbury Wood to catch the last of the bluebells.

Note to selves: Go a bit earlier next year.