Let me tell you a story. It’s a story about me as a child, one who loved our family trips to visit my grandma’s house. I had a lot of reasons to enjoy these trips: aunts and uncles, television (we didn’t have one growing up), grandma’s cooking, and grandma’s sense of humor. I can still smell her cumin laden spaghetti on the stove mingled with hints of grandpa’s V05 hair cream and an ever-full pot of coffee. But one of the most magical features of those visits was the book case. I was a voracious reader and grandma had shelves full of those old Reader’s Digest classic books weighting down her shelves. Each volume contained four stories and I visited the land of Arthur and his knights, Sherwood Forest with all of the merry men, followed the path of Henry Fleming as he tried to find his courage, and took the first of many trips to 221B Baker Street. Reading these books in my grandmother’s home provided endless hours of imagined time in lands very far from the Central California home I knew and I fell in love, hard. I moved on from those Reader’s Digest versions to more novels and histories that birthed a desire in me to walk on the cobblestone streets and footpaths of Austen, Wordsworth, Conan Doyle, and other British authors. Here’s my point, I’ve dreamed of visiting the UK since I was a child in my grandma’s house. A few weeks ago, I finally made it.

I left Bruges and drove to Dunkirk only to find the museum closed for renovation. The pouring rain put a damper on my plans to walk to the evacuation site as well. Definitely need to return sometime.

From Dunkirk, I took the Eurotunnel train under the English Channel to Dover. While it was overcast and a little rainy, I could still see those magnificent White Cliffs looking back towards Dunkirk. I stayed overnight right on the Channel in Dover so I could spend a whole day at Dover Castle. I could make this post incredibly long by giving you one of my history lessons, but I’m going to try and keep it short’ish.

The Romans built a lighthouse on this in sometime after AD 43.  The Saxon’s built a church next to the lighthouse in the next couple of hundred years. The church is preserved very well and the lighthouse, while clearly not in operation, still stands tall.

After the Norman invasion of 1066, William the Conqueror began building castles to signify his strength. He erected one of the first here at Dover out of earthen works and timber. Henry II built the great tower in the 1180’s with impressive stats. Then, in the 13th Century, King John and Henry III built the rings around the castle.

The castle remained garrisoned until the 20th Century. One of the tours on the grounds took us to the network of underground tunnels (built when the British feared invasion from Napoleon) that served at both hospital and headquarters during WWII. Britain’s Navy managed the evacuation from Dunkirk from these bunkers and the Heritage Foundation has recreated numerous rooms as they would have been during those days. As I wandered around the massive fortifications, I found myself in a daze. This hill served as a beacon of hope, warning, fear, power, and potential for generations of people and I was walking on the same paths they had. There is something truly humbling about looking back into history as you can in some of these locations. I hope I never lose the sense of awe the reality of war, conquest, and peace can bring.

From Dover, I took the short drive up to Cambridge, my home for the next few months. I laughed as I passed road signs for cities I know only in my imagination, places that will become reality for me in the next weeks, places stirred to life so many years ago in my grandma’s living room. My grandmother no longer lives in the same house and, when I visit, she doesn’t always remember who I am; but when I get home next I will sit with her and tell her I finally made it to the place I started dreaming of in her living room. And this time, I’ll bring the spaghetti.

(Netflix has a fantastic series, hosted by historian Dan Jones, titled Secrets of Great British Castles. The first episode covers Dover Castle and I highly recommend the hour history lesson.)