Morning seemed to come a little sooner today than usual. Our departure time was 4:30. AM. Which means I got up at 3:45. In the morning. Haha, it was almost funny to be up before the sun rises here. :) I got up, got ready, made crumpets and eggs for breakfast, and jumped in the van a little before 4:30...
....for a four and a half hour car ride. It's like joy in a tin can on wheels!!!!
I know I've used a lot of digital paper trying to adequately describe what the welsh and English countryside look like. I HAVE FAILED. These writings will never do this place justice for you, gentle reader. but it is my great hope that these descriptions will jar my memory enough in the future that I will be able to recall this landscape which I cannot seem to get enough of.
This morning, I was given an amazing opportunity for my appreciation of the view, as well as for getting up so flippin early. As we crossed the Bristol Channel, we were fortunate to see the sun coming up over the horizon, leaving long glowing reflections of itself on the water beneath. After we had crossed the bridge, I looked out over my favorite scene of green hedge-squared fields sprinkled with hay bales and small groves of lush trees. I expected to see this world still tucked into a blanket of shadow, as every other bit of earth i have seen at sunrise is. This holds true for Wales. As with all other places Ive seen at sunrise, I watched as the last whispers of night were slipping away from this country, the typical mixture of quiet peace and anticipation for the day's potential being left behind as it fled.
While this was all very normal, though a nice addition to such a lovely place, I was completely unprepared for something vastly more beautiful: the mist. it was surreal! It looked a bunch of Giant sleepy clouds had gathered together just before the sun arose, and, being too pleasantly fluffy and heavy, had allowed themselves to get caught in the boughs of the tree groves and let the hedges corral them in to lay sluggishly on top of the hay. It wasnt fog, fog just sits on top of everything. This was stretchy, sluggish, sectioned, fluffy mist riding atop a select portion of the crops and fields. It didnt always play by the rules; sometimes a really heavy sluggish bit would get caught going over the hedges into two or three fields at once, and sometimes over whole groups of the trees and bushes. But for as dense or as heavy as they appeared, a closer inspection revealed that they always levitated beautifully above the green plants by about three feet.
Remember, I'm being selfish here; I'm just praying this will be enough to preserve that memory of mine for, well, pretty much ever.
Moving on: we arrived at the White Cliffs of Dover at the end of our 4.5 hour drive (it seriously didnt feel longer than two). We only had a half hour to walk along the smaller cliff to see them. No bueno, especially since the tallest outlook point was a twenty minute hike away. So a few girls and I walked with Tom (at Tom-speed thankfully) along the trail. We walked most of the way there, and had about twenty minutes left, so I bid Tom adieu and started running along the trail. I ran along the hills for about five minutes (its SO much easier to run here at this altitude! I had no idea it made that much of a difference; the trail was all just ruddy steep hills!), snapped some shots as close to the edge as I could get (I was about 60 yards away before I had to turn around) and then ran all the way back. I met the rest of my group as they hit the entrance to the parking lot. Score!
From the cliffs of Dover, we adventured over to Dover castle. This was the first castle I had been to that was big enough for a whole city to be housed in it! What's more, the city was just lots of very tightly packed really steep hills! It was so hilly I wondered if it was man made, but it was all done by nature and had been this way for many hundreds of years. Because this house was built right on the cliff, it had been actively used in both World Wars, and so it had been altered and preserved every few decades. Apparently this castle was the big one Hitler had his eye on. When he conquered Great Britain, he was going to make Dover castle his main headquarters at the end of Operation Sealion. To his dismay, Operation Sealion was postponed, as England took longer and longer to conquer.
We found out as we were getting our ticket stickers that the secret wartime tunnels exhibit was now included with the purchase of our tickets, so we beat it over to that exhibit. These were anti-aircraft tunnels that were added onto the original mideaval tunnels during the WWI and enhanced for atom bombs in WWII. It was a very interactive tour though, so only groups of thirty could go at a time. Miya and I went across the way to look out from the cliff to the sea. When I got there, my allergies (which have been acting up periodically each day) went absolutely ballistic. I couldn't move anywhere because I was sneezing so frequently and my eyes suddenly decided to trip the water works switch, because I looked like I was balling. I knew I wasn't going to be able to keep up with the group if I didn't fix is fast, so I cut out the sneezing, dried my eyes, and dug through my bag for the dreaded Benadryll. It kicked in within ten minutes, which was a heaven-sent miracle. I was so embarrassed that my face had blown up, but I w glad that only Miya was around.
It was only minutes later that we were sent down in the tunnels for our tour. now, ever since I was a junior in high school I have studies the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and WWII extensively. For a while I considered being a history major because of how much I loved studying the finer details of those monumental moments in US history. So when I learned that these tunnels were actively used in WWII, I was really excited to get a NON-American perspective on the war. I was not disappointed.
It was strange, but I hadn't gone more than a few steps into those tunnels before I had an interesting feeling. It just, well, had a strong feeling. If you roll your eyes, then I'm glad you got the exercise, but The Second World War was easily felt here actually. The feeling seemed to seep thickly from the old red brick walls; a potent militant sense of directed purpose, haste, and survival-focused discipline. Those first few switchbacks of tunnels were the only times I felt it so strongly, all the other rooms felt...really really muted somehow. Sometimes it came back, but just in some spots of some rooms, and it was never quite as strong again. Hmmm, I had never thought about that till just now....
The whole tour was a series of interactive movies about the beginning of the war, almost always using the actual old footage and radio broadcasts. It talked about the blitzkrieg vs. Britains much smaller Air Force, it never actually went into Britains advantage with radar, but talked a little bit about Operation Sealion and how Dover was a target for a while. It was done extremely well. They had turned the last longest tunnel into a type of moving video; the whole tunnel was dark except for a projector shining on one wall, showing war footage, the trapped soldiers trying to evacuate Dunkirk, and how over 300,000 troops were rescued. For any and all interested in learning about this war, this was a phenomenal place to learn from.
I just realized, for as much live raw footage that was used and for how clearly everything was explained, I think the more tour alterations that were in a room, the more muted that feeling was for me. It was only in the spots where the bare walls were exposed and there was less plastic, the more it came back. Interesting....
When we left the tour, Miya and I walked around the castle a bit more. There are ruins from every age in this castle. We saw what remains of an ancient roman lighthouse, the inside of a very old Saxon church, and of course checked out the gift shop. Miya picked up a wooden sword, which she has named Dynamo, and has continued to bring everywhere since.
Side note: I hope one day to have the confidence to be able to do something like goof around with a wooden sword like a boss all across the UK and have people think only more of you for of it, Becuase you couldn't care less about what they think anyway. That's the beauty of REAL self confidence: your happiness is based on you unsheepishly acting like your total imperfect self before the world, not nipping and tucking your personality to fit what you think others want from you.... within reason (I really don't want to advocate murder, theft, or anything the strength of youth pamphlet would frown upon. That's just a bad idea all over the place).
We realized we were getting left by our group, so we ran all the way through and out of the castle all the way to the van lot, like any stereotypically SUBTLE American would naturally do.
We drove to the Walmer estate. The mansion was gigantic, very Pride and Prejudice-esque, but we only walked around the huge Victorian gardens. By this time though, my body was severely disobeying my brain, as it thought it would be a hilarious idea to imitate a limp, wet rag. It was so stupid, but I was actually falling asleep on my feet! Super weird. We had all split up until departure time. So I was walking though a field of beautiful golden grass, when this wooden chair appeared just to the side of the trial. I told my body, "no way! We're on tour! You're gonna miss the departure time!" But it totally disregarded my plea, comfortably sat in the sunny chair, and I fell asleep. Fortunately, I only slept about ten minutes before I woke up. I decided, much to my dismay, that I should just go back to the van and crash, so I didn't have to worry about missing my ride (I was still a little aloof about creepers, but I had learned a few tricks about that for those lawn parking lots). So I shuffled back away to the van. To my relief, there were a ton of people having lunchtime picnics out on the parking lot floor, since it was one of the typical lawn lots that they sometimes have here. I cozied-up on the back step of the van and crashed again until my group came back at the designated time.
From there we drove to the town of Canterbury. Once we did a lap of the town, we were sent on our own for about two hours to meet up at the van. I went with my group to find dinner. I wasn't real hungry, but I wanted to wake up...so I indulged in a milkshake for dinner :) by the way, the ice cream here is nothing like the ice cream at home! It is so much more creamy and tasty here!!
The university of Kent was having a graduation ceremony in the apse of the cathedral, so the streets were packed with graduates and their families. It was cool to see them in their black robes with blue sashes everywhere. We looked at a ton of shops, I picked up a few more gifts for people back in Utah, and then we went to meet our whole group for Evensong in the Canterbury cathedral.
I really enjoy going to evensong. The program outline is the same for every one; the guest choir sings a lot of the psalms, a few prayers, and then a few scriptures are read by the pastor, before all say the apostles creed together. I say all but two lines of the creed, since I believe all the rest of it. And the singing is lovely.
This time they had a boys choir sing!! I love boys choirs!!!! But only if they have been through the rigors of technique and practice, and believe me, I can absolutely tell; even without choir experience, I can tell disciplined music from technique-less music. It's like confusing delicious apple juice for a cup of non-distilled vinegar. Oops is correct. Fortunately, these young boys were on the high-average side of boys choirs Ive heard.
I learned a lot from their 'free song.' There were some very straightforward line about putting the needs of others far before your own, and about handing over your unfinished self to The Lord, so everything could be truly finished. I jotted down the lines in my notebook. It was lovely.
After evensong ended, we loaded up in the van and drove home, arriving around ten or eleven. I wasn't feeling the fatigue like I had been earlier in the day, but I felt great about the idea of going to sleep. Once I got everything set up for the next day, prayers were said and scriptures were read, I flat out crashed. Not bad for a single days work, eh?
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