WE DID IT! I clocked in 145.09 and LINDA - 158.60 miles.
I missed one day and we both skipped a stage that was redundant, she walked a day I recuperated from the shin splints. We both ended up together today with a final 13.05 miles to end a great pilgrimage.
The taxi dropped us in Canterbury where we had dinner at The Shakespeare then walked back to the hotel, 3 miles to end the day at 16 miles.
I FEEL GREAT!
And what a wonderful section to end the trip on.
It was countryside walking at its best with bridges.... interesting traditional stiles, this one with a doggie door.....
These markers are suggestions, I don't know who did the mileage, the GPS doesn't lie, but its been fun to see the progress.
Old roads and trackways......
Steps and mounds.....
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| Trucks Lined Up For the Trains |
When the guidebook said "come around the bend and be prepared to be amazed at the vast CHANNEL TUNNEL TERMINAL" he wasn't kidding. I was fascinated by the process of lining up the cars and trucks, entering a tunnel and emerging on a train, each semi in its own "cage". The tunnel goes under the earth, below where we walked, to emerge into the Channel and head to France.
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| Cars in the rear, trucks in the Fore |
I had so many questions! How does this work?
The idea of a tunnel was first proposed in 1801. Work began in 1988 with both British and French sides drilling to meet in the middle, like those sand tunnels you used to make that always fell in. I loved those.
The Channel Tunnel, completed in 1994, is one of the biggest engineering projects ever undertaken in the UK. Taking more than five years to complete, with more than 13,000 workers from England and France collaborating to realize the vision, the tunnel has been named one of the seven wonders of the modern world.
11 boring machines each weighing 1100 tons were made specifically for the tunnels. If they were so boring, why did they make them? HAHA, just kidding.
So... you don't drive through it, you put your car on a train. Drive up to the terminal at Folkestone and a scanner reads your car number plate so you don't even have to get out the car. Then you go through passport control. They check your passports. You might get told to drive into an area for a full vehicle search, but that's rare.
You park and wait for your train. Get there at least 30 minutes before your boarding time so you can have a walk around, get some food and use the toilets.
They have big screens telling you when your train is boarding and they also announce when the next train is boarding. At your boarding time you drive into a holding car park (like you do when waiting to get on a ferry). Drive onto the train. Boarding takes about 10 to 15 minutes and then the train departs.
I don't know why they have windows in the carriages because there's nothing to see!
At the other side you drive straight off - it takes about 10 minutes to unload the train. Only takes just over 1/2 hour to get to France. Fascinating. It was really fun to stand up top watching this, really.
AND....In April 2004 a 580 ton drilling machine used to bore out the tunnel sold on eBay for $63K.
Over 1 million cats and dogs have traveled on Le Shuttle representing 68% of all the pets in Britain.
The south of England was a staging area for WW2 preparations for invasion. There were pillboxes everywhere.
Folkstone has a MARTELLO TOWER. They are small defensive forts that were built across the British Empire during the 19th century, from the time of the French Revolutionary Wars onwards. I didn't know that, I had to look it up.
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| A Little Grouchy But He Ate My Apple |
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| We Were There! |
I didnt find out until a couple days later that the White Cliffs of Dover ( of song) are North of our walk so we never got to see them. I feel cheated. The scenery was stunning though, walking right up to the cliffs. Nature is taking its toll, the erosion is progressing.
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| Our View At Lunch |
- NEWS: Thousands of travelers were stuck on both sides of the Channel after French sailors launched a wildcat strike against plans by their employer to sell off two ferries. llegals camped out in Calais took advantage of the strike and heavy traffic to try to sneak aboard slow-moving vehicles they hoped might take them to Britain. Drivers were told to lock their doors. To stop the illegals, workers blocked the port of Calais then the entrance to the Channel tunnel with burning barricades, snarling up traffic in Kent for days.
- Kent Police responded to the disruption of cross-Channel ferries from Dover by turning the M20 southbound into one long truck parking lot. The National Crime Agency issued a warning in its annual report that the number of illegals attempting to make the crossing between Calais and Dover is expected to increase.
I believe this is an air shaft. There are many along the coast for the tunnel that is underground, but I couldn't recognize them to now what I was looking for.
Paris? Only 40 miles and some wet feet.
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| One of the 68%? |
Get it? Take a PEW, take a FEW... minutes to rest. HA! Cute.....
This structure is thought to be all that's left of This structure is thought to be all that's left of a Knights Templar church. After Christian fighters captured Jerusalem during the First Crusade, groups of pilgrims from across Western Europe began visiting the Holy Land. Many were killed while crossing through Muslim-controlled territory during their journey. Around 1118, a French knight named Hugues de Payens founded a military order along with eight relatives and acquaintances, calling it the Poor Knights of the Temple of King Solomon (later known as the Knights Templar). With the support of the king of Jerusalem, they set up headquarters on the sacred Temple Mount and pledged to protect Christian visitors to the city.
Lavish donations began pouring in from across Europe. Though the Templars themselves took vows of poverty, the order could accrue wealth and land. They got rich. The French king,Philip IV, resolved to bring down the order. They were rounded up, accused of monstrous crimes, tortured, burned and killed.
While most historians agree that the Knights Templar fully disbanded 700 years ago, some people believe the order went underground and remains in existence to this day. In the 18th century, certain organizations, most notably the Freemasons, revived some of the medieval knights’ symbols and traditions. Stories about the legendary Templars—that they dug up the Holy Grail while occupying the Temple Mount, for instance, or harbored a secret capable of destroying the Catholic Church continue to mystify.
The brooding Drop Redoubt, part of a line of defenses originally begun during our War of Independence, were strengthened during the Napoleonic Wars and updated and strengthened again in the mid-19th Century. Pretty useless now, but another feat of man's driven power.
POOR DOVER.
Yesterday the manager of an outdoor shop in Canterbury shook his head and advised us to avoid Dover, in fact to walk around it instead of through it.
There is a web site devoted to everything to hate about DOVER. No kidding:
1. The Dover District Council are caught in a 1950's time warp and who take everything politically without a care about who it affects or how.
2. We should just build a big wall round Dover than [sic] blow the place up don't bother starting again just turn Dover into a little island floating of [sic] into the sea to somewhere nobody gives a dam [sic].
3. Dont go to Dover, ever! It is a dirty filthy slum full of filth and squaler [sic]. Also loads of dirty ugly teenage mum slags!!
During WWII Dover was known as 'Hell Fire Corner’ .
German soldiers, in their heavily fortified emplacements, seemed to want to use up all their ammunition before surrendering. According to an American reporter the ‘attacks increased to such intensity as to be very like the bombardment of a city under siege.'
This developed into sustained bombing and shelling by cross Channel guns causing 3,059 alerts, killing 216 civilians, and damaging 10,056 premises.When the shelling ceased it was estimated that the war damage sustained by the town was proportionally greater than in any other town throughout the country.
Poor Dover.
Dover is famous for the well executed rescue of military men from Dunkirk. On May 10, 1940, Hitler struck westwards across Europe. Within three weeks Holland and Belgium had surrendered and German divisions had split the British and French armies. The British and a substantial number of French troops were trapped in a diminishing pocket of land centered on the port of Dunkirk. On May 25 Boulogne was captured and on the following day Calais fell. That evening the British Admiralty signaled the start of Operation Dynamo - the evacuation of the troops stranded on the beaches at Dunkirk.
Operation Dynamo was masterminded by Vice Admiral Bertram Ramsey who had been given less than a week to prepare. From his headquarters in tunnels under the castle, he directed and inspired a small staff who had the awesome task of planning the evacuation of up to 400,000 British and French troops under constant attack from German forces. By May 26 Ramsay had assembled 15 passenger ferries at Dover and a further 20 at Southampton. These it was hoped would be able to embark troops directly from the quays at Dunkirk. To help in the evacuation and to provide escorts for the merchant ships Ramsay had a force of destroyers, corvettes, minesweepers and naval trawlers. These ships were augmented by cargo vessels, coasters and some 40 Dutch self-propelled barges.
Between May 26 and June 4, 338,000 troops were rescued from Dunkirk, over 200,000 of them passing through Dover. During the nine day period the railway provided 327 special trains, which cleared 180,982 troops from Dover. 4,500 casualties were treated at the town's hospital and all but 50 of these seriously ill men were saved.
In November 1947, a city wide proposal plan was devised to rebuild war torn Dover. Demolition began in 1948 and many attractive ancient buildings that could have been repaired and would have been of benefit to the town today succumbed to the bulldozers, to be replaced by the time warped and depressing concrete and glass seen today. Dover never recovered. Stores are empty, crime is high, drug use and alcoholism are rampant. People I saw were bitter and bored. The main town center remains in decline, truly a depressing and dead place.
Poor Dover.
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| The End! |
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| Our Bags Taking a Celebratory Break at the Pub |
Then one last 3 mile walk from Canterbury along the river......... but we aren't done yet, there are still 4 more days to go so keep reading......
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