Friday, August 13 (Day 17) - Canterbury to Dover

In the morning I went for my usual run - looking forward to exploring the city, but ever slightly so worried that I would get lost. There are twists and turns all around and I didn't have a proper map to get acquainted with the lay of the land so I was a little nervous.

I went anyway and about 40 minutes in I found myself in a residential area, but still felt like I knew which direction I should go in order to find my way back to the city center. I even found a path that had a sign that pointed me in the direction of the city center. I wasn't worried in the least.

That is until I came to another sign that said the city center was in the direction from which I had just come! Had somebody fooled with the sign to trick silly tourists like myself? If so, did they fool with this sign or the sign before? I decided to get off the trail and try the streets and ended up heading straight...out of town. Thankfully, I managed to figure it out before I got too far and backtracked a bit - back up a hill I just come down (ugh!) - set aside my ego, saw a nice lady and asked her for directions.

She turned around to point down the hill I had just run up and there it was, clear as day: the rooftop of the Cathedral (granted, it was a bit in the distance but it was still a significant sight). If I had only looked around while I ran I would have seen it and wouldn't have had to ask at all. Oh well. It's not a big deal, of course, but still...

Grrr....

The important thing is that I did eventually find my way back to the inn, and once I cleaned up and before we went to breakfast, Constance and I decided to take one last look around the area and we soon found ourselves walking along side a little river...

...where we saw a family of ducks...

...a very pretty swan...

...a "wee" bridge (Constance has used this word a fair bit on this trip - it even comes out in a Scottish accent!)...

...and a last look at our little inn.

Moving on - to Dover! We once again hopped on a National Express Coach and made our way to Dover. It looked like a quaint enough town from the bus window, but the first person we spoke to was a little old lady from a nearby town called Deal. She was very nice in trying to help us find our way to our hotel, but the first thing she said was that she hoped we weren't staying in Dover very long, "Dover is a weird little town," she said a little too ominously.

With that bit of knowledge we trudged - cautiously - to our hotel which was, as it turned out, just a couple of blocks away. As was the case with our B&B in Canterbury, this B&B didn't have an elevator - or lifts as the Brits say - which meant Constance and I had to hike up a flight of stairs (it was two flights in Canterbury!). It seems to be the way it is with a lot of the old buildings here so it seems we will getting our fair share of exercise while we're adventuring. Logic would have it that by the time this trip is over we'll both be svelte and ready for the runway.

Or not.

Aaaanyway, Dover turned out to be a quaint - if not slightly strange - town. We had a couple of nice walks along the waterfront and to the end of an extraordinarily long pier where we saw a bunch of kids on some sort of organized outing playing around in kayaks, some fisherman and a lighthouse.

On the waterfront - the windy waterfront!

Laughing Constance - I think she was trying to look tired because we just walked up a hill...but she started laughing...and couldn't stop!

It was even more windy at the end of the exradordinarily long pier we walked!

I have loved England, dearly and deeply,

Since that first morning, shining and pure,

The white cliffs of Dover I saw rising steeply

Out of the sea that once made her secure.

I had no thought then of husband or lover,

I was a traveller, the guest of a week...

~Alice Duer Miller

(In looking for the lyrics to the song I came upon this poem and this part of it very appropriate!)

Dinner was a couple of sandwiches and some raw veggies with hummus bought in a local supermarket called The Coop. We also shared a bottle of wine...but I swear wine is sold in smaller bottles in the UK than they are in America. Really! No joke. They're teeny tiny in comparison....