There is a Saxon church, a Roman Pharos (lighthouse) as well as the main part of the castle built by Henry II, and expanded over the following centuries.
Like the rest of the town and surrounding area, the Castle sits on chalk, which is easy to tunnel through by hand. I say easy, but easier than say granite, and from Napoleonic times, tunnels have been dug under the castle an under Western Heights the other side of the harbour.
There are three levels of tunnels now under the castle, Casemate (which is the oldest, and has the hospital), Annex (which housed the domestic functions during the war and after) and Dumpy (the lowest, and built for the second world war, and converted to cold war use).
The first two levels are open most days with regular tours, but not Dumpy. So, through December and January, at weekends, English Heritage ran tours that can be booked, as long as you don't mind confined spaces, don't have asthma and in an emergency, climb the 80 plus steps back to ground level.
Which is why we were going to the castle on a wet and windy Sunday morning.Its only a ten minute drive from Chez Jelltex to the castle, we turned up the entrance road, waited in line a couple of minutes until ten, then drove up and up the the highest car park, before wrapping up and making our way to the entrance to pay.
The Dumpy tour cost an extra tenner each, so we booked on the eleven tour, and made our way to the Great Tower to get some shots before making our way down via a series of ramps and steps almost to the entrance tower just above the main road.
From there our way was down a long tunnel, to one of the overviews of the eastern end of the beach and the bottom of Jubilee Way..
After signing a waiver, we were left to wait ten minutes, then have a brief where we were told, sadly, that photography wasn't permitted.
Boo!Thankfully, there was a lift to take us down to Dumpy level, so in two batches we go in for the 30 second trip down. And once there our guide begins to tell us about the levels uses, room by room, and its change from a WWII control post to a proposed Seat of Local Government in the event of nuclear war.
What is left now is a series of empty rooms, connected by corridors, almost all equipment was stripped out when the site was decommissioned at the end of the 1970s, so sometimes imagination was needed.
The largest room was the WWII plotting room, so featured in films about the war where information from radar posts and lookouts was sent out to anti-aircraft batteries and RAF bases for action to be taken.Once the war ended, and hydrogen bombs were developed, the devastation that such war could bring was clear, so alternate forms and locations of Government were created, mostly using bunkers left over from the war for cost.
Of course, Dover's Dumpy tunnels and the other centres were never used in anger, and probably would have been pretty ineffective if the lessons of the only full scale exercise were true.
After an hour, we all got in the lift for the trip back to street level, where we decided having re-joined EH for the year, that we would return on a nicer day, so battled against the wind and rain back to the car to drive home for a brew which would be considerably cheaper than ones bought in the castle.
Back home then, after after supping, Jools went to the tip and I got making dinner: steak and red wine pie, roast spuds, steamed veggies and more gravy left over from Christmas. News is that the everlasting jug of beef gravy will be finished the next time we have any, so is that a pie on the horizon?And as expected, the afternoon was full of football, though I missed the first half of the Arsenal v Liverpool game thanks to me finishing the box of red wine, and in doing so stretched the dregs to four glasses of plonk.
Liverpool won, 2-0, as Arse could not score.
So it goes, so it goes.
And so, the weekend was over once again.
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