Castles

Friday 23rd February

This weekend's outings started with a Friday drive with Reggie to Bodiam Castle.

The castle is a ruin built in the 14th Century and set in some grounds that are dog friendly.  It's a nice walk and for us humans it has a gravelled path to walk on.

It was about 3°C when we arrived. First stop was to check in and sort out parking.  

As NT members we get free parking and the new machines can read the QR code on membership cards. Then it was coffee time.

Once we had warned up we took a stroll around the site.

The castle is on an island although I expect the moat was dug later.

We had intended to go across the road to the pub for lunch but we weren't all that hungry. 

Instead we tried to get a signal to access doggiepubs.com to see if the pub at Rye Harbour was dog-friendly.  It's not on there.

Instead I set the sat-nav for Rye on the coast and we would look for a pub called the Ship Inn.

The pub was built in the 16th century and is very nice. The menu is a little modern. Pubs nowadays don't simply do pie and chips or maybe a ploughman's. Except of course the ploughman made do with bread and cheese and maybe an apple and not all the green matter in that link!!

We had sweetcorn and chilli soup and a side plate of calamari.  Reggie was very quiet and lay alongside the table. There were water bowls but the free biscuits never materialised.

Once we finished we set off for home. Another nice day out.

Saturday 24th February

Today was another Castle.  It's also Claire's birthday and she wanted to go to Dover Castle and see the Secret War Rooms built in the tunnels in the chalk cliff itself.

The first part of the tour is with a guide and then the second half is self guided. We saw the operations rooms for the sea defence and air defence against German attacks.

Also these rooms were housed the teams that  coordinated Operation Dynamo and the saving of over 330000 allied troops from the beaches at Dunkerque.

I took a free pics from the audio visual show... These are from the Operation Dynamo.

We gave been a few times before and this completes the usual trip. However, there are a lower set of tunnels and rooms that were creaged during the Cold War. These are open at different times.

From here we climbed back up to the car and back to reality and a stop at Sainsbury for the weekly shop.