I was woken by a text message from “My Boy
TM ” asking if I was awake. What answer did he think he would get
at 8.30am on a Sunday? But we leapt into action, and with the house guests
alive and raring to go, ‘er indoors TM did a full English breakfast for us. That
went down nicely.
And then with Brian and Rachel following, we
set off to Folkestone to collect more of our party before parking up at the
Western Heights car park. A dozen of us were raring to go, and those who’d
arrived at the car park first had found an interesting hole in a wall. To be
precise, not so much “in” as “under”. So half a dozen of us scrambled
into the hole to have a look-see. It’s become something of a tradition to “boldly go”. We found several linked
rooms, and a couple of corridors leading off into the distance.
With this fully explored, we scrambled out,
and then found what (at first sight)
looked like a rabbit hole. After a bit of discussion I remained of the opinion
that it was a rabbit hole, but when “Daddy’s Little Angel TM ” disappeared into the hole I found myself
reconsidering. So I scrambled into the hole myself. This one was rather
disappointing – having forced myself into one of the narrowest holes I’ve (so
far) been in, there wasn’t much to be seen inside. Mind you, getting out
was quite tricky. In the end Stevey grabbed my hand and forcibly dragged me
out. But it achieved the desired result.
From here we went
to the St Martin’s deep shelter. It’s one I’ve visited before, but some of our
party hadn’t. And so we spent an enjoyable twenty minutes underground before
making our way to the Drop Redoubt. The Western Heights Preservation Society
were staging an open day, and we saw re-enactments with proper muskets being
fired (oh – they were LOUD!), we watched a chap having his leg
amputated, we swapped insults with the actors, we got told off by the actors.
It was a really good day out. We really must go to their next open day.
And then with time
pushing on, we went down the Grand Shaft. Built
over two hundred years ago to provide a short cut for troops to get from the
Western Heights to Dover (and back again), it’s quite amazing to behold.
I’ve never seen a triple spiral staircase before. Going down was easy enough,
but coming back up nearly killed me. And as I struggled up I met an ex-cub who
was having no trouble going up and down the stairs, and said hello to more of
my loyal readers who were there as well.
It would have been
good to have got round to the detached
bastion again, but we’d run out of time. We shall have to go back later.
Pausing only briefly to laugh at Chris (who’d caught his “flowers and frolics” on a
railing) we made our way back to the car park and home.Having said goodbye
to Dave, I then slobbed about for a bit. And after a cracking bit of tea I went
back to NeverWinter. Zombies have over-run the graveyard. They do that…
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