Day 25...Oh the White Cliffs of Dover! - 21st July

Planned to get up early today but Nates mobile was flat and we didnt have an alarm clock. Got lucky though as I got woken up bz 2 pigeons mating outside the bedroom window.

Wandered around town super early to grab some breaky and ended up eating at a cafe by the side of the road and watching all these weirdos turn up for a Christian convention. They were dressed in their sunday best, which meant long 60's mumu dresses for the women, and short sleeved shirts and clip on ties for the guys. mmm sexy.

After that we headed off for Dover along the southern coast of England. The coastal towns for quite a while had the same sea-shantyish feel to them and quite cute. It was like "bam" fully packed small town, then a field then "bam" another town again. Although they were separate towns, they really were only separated by that stray field. After a while things started getting a bit more country. The english countryside is just like all the movies and TV shows which surprised me as everyone craps on about what an urban sprawl england is. I felt like we were in an episode of Heartbeat, or Paddington Bear or something. There were lots of fields and sheep and farmhouses and towns and purple flowers by the road. the trees looked like they did in those Winnie the Pooh books you used to read as a kid. We even saw a squashed badger. Cool, roadkill.

It took us just after lunch to reach Dover, which was a cute little town nestled under a hill with a massive castle looming above it. And then there was a massive port with cruise ships, ferries, trucks, crates and a burger king next door! We got France on our radio.
We stopped at a hill on the way down and saw old battlement hideouts from WWII. It was weird to see it - you mean what they taught us in high school was actually real? ha ha.

The cliffs themselves were hard to find as there was no signage - England is crap on its signage. Even the speed limit is a teeny weeny circle and most times you miss it and dont know which speed to do.

Once we got there it was free as we signed on as National Trust members in Australia before we left. The pathway to the cliffs was a hard chalky surface which made strange padding sounds under your feet. And the cliffs were huge! You felt the distance when you saw how high up from the port you were: then you realised how amazing it really was as they were made by minute sea creatures dead and compacted together over millions of years. I think it was 15m every 10million years or something I can't remember. Quite an effort though, don't you think? We couldn't see France as it was so hazy and polluted. I thought at one moment that I saw it, but then realised it was just a really thick brown puff of cloud pollution. But that was ok as the cliffs were pretty and thistles and purple flowers were everywhere with butterflies flitting amongst them. There were also old english fences and ponies grazing. aawww. It was so hot again that we didn't do the full trek to the lighthouse and got back into our hot car and headed for home. I didn't realise I had made a wrong turn but we were were on a remotish road that took us down a steep cliff to a tinz pub nestled at the base of a huge cliff. It was St Margarets Bay or something. It was really pretty so we stopped for a drink there, figured our route again and set off.

We went via Canteburz this time. It was bigger and more city-ish than I'd hoped so we drove straight through, driving past the huge outside walls of the castle. There were tourists crawling all over it. On the way home, we were on the Orbital (the massive highway ring that circles London) where the traffic slowed down, and down....and dooowwwnnnnn....before coming to a complete stop. We sat in the hot sunny car (or more accurately I dozed, and Nathan had to sit in the drivers seat in the sun) for 45 minutes to an hour until a traffic car pulled in front of us and started directing everyone off the highway. We were lucky! If it had pulled in behind us, god knows how long we would have been stuck there! The exit ramp went for several miles next to the highway and it was banked up the whole time. Even when we pulled away, the jam went on for miles into the distance. We didn't even see the crash it was still further up. The English were dealing with it in their usual fashion. If it had been the yankees (picture black/white lady from the bus in LA) their horns would have been blaring, and people would be yelling and waving their hands in the air. A lorry driver quipped tro the traffic dude "oh that bad is it?" and pulled into the exit. For those who were trapped - they had pulled out deckchairs, were milling around their cars chatting, some were playing cards and one group had a frisbee out. Everything bar tea and scones I think.

I took us on an alternate route but took smaller routes thinking it was shorter but it was bumper to bumper and we ended up 4 hours late at 8.30pm. We caught up with Kristin and went to a local Chinese eat, then um'ed and ah'ed about going out. With a little help from some friends, we were on our way to the nightclub Fabric, a dance nightclub we had heard alot about. Kristin's friend was a bouncer and said he could get us in for free. But we couldn't get in contact with him and it was 15 pounds entry even at 2am (the time that we arrived there) so we declined. From what we could see anyway it was just like Family in Brisbane with great plumes of smoke coming out the doors. We went to another club down the road called Bedouin instead and had a few drinks and went to bed around 4.30am.

PS: the drive through the suburbs, although 4 hours long was quite nice. There were pretty tree-lined streets and old terrace houses and parks and pubs and everyone was outside enjoying the weather. We crossed over the Thames once and there were heaps of cute little boats on it. we only went through one bad neighbourhood where we put the locks down on the cars (but in comparison that neighbourhood was just like any other we saw in the USA)