Friday 14th November 2025

Nurse Edith Cavell was executed by German forces during WWI as she had aided British POWs to escape.

There was great diplomatic efforts to have her death sentence commuted or delayed, but to no avail.

She was shot by eight soldiers, and in time, her body was repatriated, the wagon her body was carried from Dover is the same used for the body of the Unknown Soldier.

The luggage wagon usually rests at Bodiham on the Kent and East Sussex Railway, but for November it has been brought back to the former Dover Marine station.

I got tickets, so after lunch we would visit, not just to see the wagon and pay our respects, but the station is now a cruise terminal, and is rarely open to the public, and it had been a decade or so since my last visit.

I slept late, late enough so that Jools driving off to yoga woke me up at ten past six. Outside rain was bouncing down, and there was the bins to do.

I got up and put them out, dodging the raindrops, and back inside to make a coffee.

With rain expected all day, other than doing to the station after lunch, not much else planned, whilst Jools had her craft and gossip morning at the village library.

Jools came back from yoga as I was finishing my coffee, so I made breakfast giving her an hour before she had to leave again.

I listened to podcasts and watched videos for the morning, not much else to do, really.

Sadly, we had what we thought was the plumber coming to fix the overflow, but instead Craig came to touch up some paint in the toilet.

So Jools stayed home and I drove down to the Western Docks, over the flyover, past the former Lord Warden Hotel, then round to where lines from London entered Dover Marine, forming a large flat crossing in a tangle of lines.

You can still see how the lines used to curve west to join the main line to Folkestone, but is now concreted over, as are the tracks between the platforms, so to create a large flat parking area for cruisers.

I showed my ticket, and walked up through the central arch along what was the path of platforms 2 and three, past the former station buildings and under the footbridge.

At the far end there was the wagon, so I walked up, showed my ticket again, had my name ticked off, and went to look inside.

Inside there is a coffin, a replica of the one that brought the body of the unknown soldier back from France, and on the walls there were information boards on the only three bodies to be brought back from the war.

I exited it, took shots all around it, then walked to the war memorial, which is a splendid thing, and should be more accessible.

And I was done.

I thanked the volunteers and walked out, getting shots of the walkway linking the former hotel with the station and the Admiralty pier before taking shelter from the rain in the car and driving home.

I had been gone all of 40 minutes.

Once back I began to cook dinner/lunch: chicken pie, roast potatoes, steamed leeks, sprouts and spring greens, gravy and shop bought Yorkshire puddings.

It was all done by four, by which time Craig had done two coats of paint and had left.

I poured a beer and a cider, then dished up, the potatoes lovely and crunchy, without being burnt.

I won the music quiz at six, which was nice, then after washing up I settled down to watch Northern Ireland play in Slovakia.

A poor game, ended 1-0 to the home side, but Northern Ireland go to the play-offs anyway.