Day Eight July 3, 1998 Hastings, Dover, on to London Wednesday Friday We woke up in Chichester, and had another day working against us. By that I mean, we were in the ‘wrong’ city first thing in the morning, and would have to immediately drive to a destination. Days like this start rough for us, as we don’t get to see or do anything until after 10am or so. Our optimal daily pattern, as we learned on this trip, was to drive on after dinner as the last thing each night, wake up at the ‘destination’ city, and do sightseeing immediately each morning. The extra time to ‘sleep-in’ in the morning helped a lot, and Jesse, of course, got to sleep in the van during the last leg of driving each night. But today we woke up in Chichester, and had to drive to Hastings, then on to Dover, then Canterbury. The day would end when we finally got to drive once through London's streets around 9pm on the way to our hotel out near Heathrow. It was expected be a long day of sightseeing, followed by a long night after that. I was still disappointed that the Marriott at Regents Park (near the zoo) refused our reservation on points, even though they still had rooms available for cash. The time planned for driving in the car through London tonight was important as it would be the best way to understand just how big the city was and what would be the best method for us to attack it tomorrow and Sunday. We planned on taking a double-decker tourist bus tomorrow, so tonight would be a prime chance for us to drive by any outlying sights by car. Also by arriving in London late at night, we should be able to see things and get oriented to the city with a minimum of confusion from traffic congestion. But first we had to drive to Hastings. Well, first we stopped at McDonalds for another cup of yukky ‘morning coffee’ and breakfast food. Jesse and Lyn immediately curled up, I tuned into the BBC and started the 90 minute drive to Hastings. We cruised through several small towns on the way. I can’t help myself whenever I’m on a by-pass around a town (even in the States) that I have to head straight to the city center, once around downtown, then back out to the highway. I was impressed how such small English towns have such huge churches and cathedrals in their downtown. Lyn and Jesse didn’t awaken, but I notice that all of the little towns start to look alike. They have rows of storefronts, townhouses, duplexes on the outskirts, and are ringed by small and very old looking fields. With Marks and Spencer, Boots the Chemist, and sadly McDonalds and Blockbuster Video. By today, I was totally comfortable driving on the ‘left side’ and cruised down the ‘motorway’ enjoying talk radio call-ins about the English soccer team’s devastating loss to Argentina in the France World Cup. We followed the road along the coast of the English Channel, the area where William the Conqueror landed and occupied while waiting for poor King Harold to arrive from the north. This is also the area of numerous embarkation points for much of the allied D-Day invasion of Nazi occupied France, some 400 years later. But today, it is just so much pretty scenery to me. We had some humorous ‘technical difficulties’ with the GPS unit. While Lyn was getting our food and coffee back at McDonalds, I had stayed in the car and entered latitude and longitude data points from the laptop into the hand-held GPS. We learned that this was also a morning pattern that worked great for us. By the end of this trip, Jesse and I could quickly do the entries, one calling out the data points while the other enters them in. But a funny thing happened today. Chichester is west of the Greenwich meridian (Longitude Zero, Western Hemisphere) and Hastings is east of it. Without paying attention, I inadvertently entered all the co-ordinates as “degrees west” instead of “degrees east”, before we set off. After our snack, and everybody (but me) curled up for their nap, I kept one eye on the highway and one on the ‘distance to go’ tracker on the GPS. I drove peacefully for almost an hour through beautiful English countryside as the GPS said we were starting to approach Hastings. Only none of the highway signs mentioned Hastings at all. While I tried to read the map and the laptop (without waking anybody up) it all became too much to do and to still drive (on the left side of the road). Eventually, I had to pull off at the next exit in the middle of nowhere to read the map. Of course, everybody immediately woke up (“where are we?”, "I'm Thirsty", "I'm hungry", “I have to go to the bathroom”). I had no idea where we were, and the GPS was telling me I was in downtown Hastings. It said we missed our turn 3 miles back, so we dug out the laptop and spent the next 20 minutes booting up then reading coordinates back and forth while stumbling over the little hemisphere thing. To finish the story, we found out that we were still 20 miles from Hastings, only the quiet sailing along with just me and the BBC were now over and it was back to ‘family vacation’ instead (‘I’m hungry’, ‘I spilled my milk’, ‘I have to puke’, etc). The town of Hastings is pretty, and it is the center point of the ‘history tour’ part of our trip. We figured out that the Norman conquest era had the most interest for us, and Hastings is the place to see it all. The signs led us right up to ‘Battle Abbey’, the remains of the church built by William the Conqueror as his ‘promise to God’ to honor the victory over King Harold and the Saxons. Before we left home, we watched several PBS-style videos from the Library (all very good) discussing that period in history, the events just prior and the ones after. It was nice to think how much appreciation that Jesse gained (let alone his Mom and Dad) about history. Of course the 2 or 3 decades following the Battle of Hastings were the ‘boom years’ for castle construction, and all of those castles are ruins today (at the hand of Henry VIII), if they can still be found at all. If you don’t know the story it goes something like this (from a US perspective). William the Conqueror lived in Normandy (in France, Omaha beach and all). During a prolonged visit to Normandy, the Saxon king of England (Edward the Confessor) swore an oath to promise William the throne upon his death. There is some question that the promise was made under duress, depending whether the king was a 'house guest' or was being held 'prisoner' by William at the time. Later, from the safety of London, King Edward changed his mind, fulfilled an earlier promise, and bequeathed the throne to his son-in-law instead: ta-da King Harold. William was furious, invoked the pope (over the broken promise) and took a couple of years to build an army and a fleet and all of that. The fleet sailed and landed in southern England and set up camp, waiting for Harold to show up and be defeated. Unfortunately (for Harold), the Danes (Vikings) chose this same exact spring to land an invading army near York. Harold took his army, marched north 200 miles and (luckily) defeated and ran off the Danes. The skeleton crew left behind in London learned of William’s landing from France and sent a message to Harold up north in York. Without much warning and fresh from the victorious battle with the Danes, he marched his troops all the way back to London and, without rest, right on out to Hastings to fight William and the Normans (and their Vatican inspired friends). There is much detail known about the actual battle, and you should read it sometime, but it comes down to the fact that Harold almost won again. They used some nifty tactics, but William did, too. In the battle, Harold was shot with an arrow into his eye (ouch) and died on the battlefield. Without their leader, the Saxon soldiers gave up and fled (‘every man for himself’) and such began the Norman conquest of England. This entire lesson was passed on in the famous ‘Bayeux Tapestry’, and each of the BBC videos showed extensive footage of the various scenes. I was very excited to visit Hastings, especially to see this famous tapestry and to see how it was going to be displayed. It was the first thing I asked the hostess when we purchased our entrance tickets. Me: Where will I find the ‘Bayeux Tapestry’. Her: In “Bayeux” that’s why they call it the “Bayeux tapestry”. Me: And where will I find “Bayeux”? Her: In “Bayeux”, “France”. Me: Right, I knew that. So instead we all got those nice headset things that let you walk around and listen to the story. Small signs here and there tell you what happened, and tell you what button to press. All in all, very organized, well presented, and the highlight of English history for me. We spent over 2 hours at Battle Abbey, a lifetime by our standards, and then hit a grocery store (Tesco) on the way out of town for more batteries, snackies and fruit. We finally arrived in Dover, our second stop, at about 10 minutes to 5pm. We had been looking forward to seeing ‘Dover castle’ and, fearing that it closed at 5, zipped right to its entrance gate. Luckily for us, it closed at 6 so we had time to see some details. Dover castle has some structures (a lighthouse ruin) dating back to Roman times, a keep dating back to Saxon and early Norman times, plus a castle built by Henry VIII (I think), and later buildings that were used as an allied HQ during the war with Hitler’s Nazis. Dover castle had something for every taste and preference. Lyn kept the car and shot pictures of the grounds and castle while Jesse and I took the WW-II highlights tour. We saw how tunnels that had been dug to defend Dover against an attack by Napoleon were retrofitted for radio intelligence against Hitler. Details were given about the evacuation of Dunkirk, logistics for D-Day, and an emergency hospital for RAF fighter pilots shot down over the channel during the battle of Britain. It was a nice little tour, but a little too staged for me (with fake air raid sirens and dimming lights and all) but it was still well worth it. Of course afterward we hung around the grounds a little too long and took too many pictures of each other with Calais, France in the background. Also, the famous ‘white cliffs’ were a little less spectacular than I had imagined they would be given how much I had heard about them (I guess Dover’s cliffs have had a good P.R. department through the centuries). Of course, my favorite part of today was softly singing: “I see London, I see France, ...” but nobody laughed at that one either. We drove once around the city of Dover, saw the entrance to the “Chunnel” and an RAF fighter memorial. Then we left for Canterbury around 7pm. Although it was late, the sun was still shining well until nearly 10pm, so we arrived in Canterbury with everything closed, but visible. Canterbury cathedral was very nice from the outside, and we agreed to see the inside on our ‘next trip to England’. The town itself was a little tough to navigate with several one-way and dead-end streets. I spent the next two hours muttering “Won’t somebody rid me of this meddlesome priest!” but we never did get to see the crypt that caused all the fuss and ‘the Canterbury Tales’. Next trip for sure! We hit the outskirts of London with the sun well set but the sky still pale blue, must have been around 9:30. This was my first real big city right-hand side driving test and even with the thin traffic from being late in the evening, I was on overload. We pulled out our paper maps of London and Lyn did tight navigation while I drove. My primary plan was to head straight to the Greenwich Observatory, famous home of the Royal Astronomers over the centuries and to show Lyn and Jesse the Greenwich Meridian running through the courtyard. We found the place in the dark (using the maps and the GPS for the zero longitude), parked the car on a side street, and walked into the nearly ready to close grounds. The Observatory is in a beautiful park, which was empty and due to close any minute. We saw the observatory building, marked our spot with the GPS and promised to return. We found a nearby train station, in case we didn’t want to bring the car next time. Next we drove over the ‘Tower bridge’. This is the one that every decent American calls the “London Bridge”. It looks just like the pictures, only the support cables were painted a sky-blue and I remember them being black (or was I looking at a black and white photo?) We crossed the Thames river a half-dozen times, on the Friars bridge, the new London Bridge and that other bridge who’s name escapes me right now. We drove right up to Big Ben and took a picture in the dark. We drove around and around, using the GPS to mark a bunch of different sites so we could easily return to them during our next two days in London on foot. We found Trefalger square and it’s obelisk right across from the Royal Museum. We found Westminster Abbey and Buckingham and Kensington and St James’s Palaces and the like. We didn’t stop (couldn’t park anywhere) and just wanted to orient ourselves anyway. We hit Picadilly Circus at night and it was quite a sight, all lit up like Times Square. Also drove drove by the “Hard Rock Cafe”, and London’s theatre district with all of the marquees lit up. But we were exhausted, now slightly oriented, and ready for bed. We were due to stay at the Marriott (bless those frequent flyer points) for 3 nights. Unfortunately, the only Marriott we could readily reserve was at Heathrow airport, almost 30 miles due west of downtown London. So we followed the signs to Heathrow and ‘points west’ (blindly) without verifying our maps or software. After 20 or more minutes of driving one city street after another, we entered a motorway. Soon the signs to the airport, which I followed knowing full well our hotel was at the next motorway exit. I went down to the airport just to see it and to find the ‘tube’ station. In my mind, I intended to have the Marriott van shuttle us to the airport (free, every 30 minutes) then catch the tube to London from there. The tube station was easy to locate and the Marriott was at the next exit, right where it was supposed to be. We hauled in all the luggage (again) due to the 3 day stay, and crashed into bed. Tomorrow and Sunday were going to be fun!
	Copyright, 1999, all rights reserved
	Originally Written November 1999 Original Upload January 2000 Last Update: July 22, 2001