Closer to home: Kearsney Abbey and the Dour valley
The shortest of the day trips from Dover barely leaves the town. The river Dour, about four miles long, rises at Watersend near Temple Ewell and runs down its valley through River, Kearsney and Buckland to the harbour. It is the reason Dover exists, and its valley makes a pleasant half-day of parks, millponds and old mills.
Kearsney Abbey is the main destination. Despite the name it was never a religious house: John Minet Fector, of the Dover merchant and banking family, built it between 1820 and 1822 and gave it a misleadingly monastic title. After the Second World War the council bought the house and its grounds, and when advanced dry rot was found in 1959 the house was demolished except for the billiards room, which has long served as a café. The grounds, with their lake fed by the Dour and the stream from the Bushy Ruff lakes, were improved in the 1970s and make a fine public park on the edge of town.
A little downstream, Crabble Corn Mill is a six-storey watermill built in 1812, when the Army was paying for new flour mills along the Dour to feed the troops gathered against Napoleon. It closed in 1893, was rescued twice in the late twentieth century and reopened after restoration in 1990. Kearsney station, one stop from Dover Priory on the Canterbury line, makes the valley easy to reach without a car.
Dover to Canterbury
Dover to Canterbury is the classic day trip, about 16 miles inland along the A2, which follows closely the line of the Roman road between the two towns. Trains run from Dover Priory to Canterbury East on the old London, Chatham and Dover line. The cathedral, with its shrine of Thomas Becket, is the reason most people go. Together with St Augustine's Abbey and St Martin's Church it forms a World Heritage Site, and the city's medieval centre is compact enough to see in a day.
The link from Dover to Canterbury is very old. Pilgrims landing at Dover on their way to Becket's shrine were the reason Hubert de Burgh founded the Maison Dieu in 1203, to give them a bed for the night. In the hills about three miles outside Dover are the remains of St Radigund's Abbey, founded around 1191; after it was suppressed in 1538 its stone was carted off to build Sandgate and Walmer castles, and the site is now a private farm with its north tower still standing.
Deal, Walmer and Sandwich
North-east of Dover the coast flattens out towards Deal, about eight miles away by road or rail, and the walk there along the cliffs by way of St Margaret's at Cliffe and Kingsdown is one of the best long walks in Kent. Deal itself is a town of narrow streets set behind a long shingle beach, with a pier and a seafront of its own. Julius Caesar knew this stretch: arriving off Dover in 55 BC and seeing the cliffs lined with armed Britons, he sailed on and landed near Deal instead.
Deal and Walmer castles were built by Henry VIII in the same programme of coastal artillery forts that gave Dover Moat's Bulwark under the castle cliff in about 1539. Both are low, round, squat forts designed for guns rather than knights, and both are cared for by English Heritage, which publishes their seasonal opening times. Walmer has the richer story. It is the official residence of the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, a post that once carried real power over the ports and is now an honour for long service to the Crown. The Duke of Wellington, Lord Warden for more than twenty years, died there in 1852, and the castle's gardens are among its best features.
Offshore lie the Goodwin Sands, the shoals that the South Foreland lighthouse was built to warn ships away from. The water between the sands and the shore, the Downs, was for centuries one of the great anchorages of the Royal Navy.
The railway continues from Deal to Sandwich, one of the original five Cinque Ports alongside Dover, Hythe, Romney and Hastings. Sandwich was once the port of the Royal Fleet, but its harbour silted up, which is part of the reason so much effort went into keeping Dover's harbour open. The result is a small medieval town left high and dry, with a remarkable survival of old streets and buildings. Close by, at Richborough, are the walls of the Roman fort of Rutupiae, one of the nine Forts of the Saxon Shore listed in a fourth-century document alongside Dover's own Saxon Shore fort.
Folkestone and the coast to the west
West of Dover the A20 and the railway run along the foot of the downs to Folkestone, about seven miles away, passing Samphire Hoe on the way. Folkestone grew up as a resort and a cross-Channel port in its own right; its clifftop promenade, the Leas, and its restored harbour arm make an easy day out. Beyond it lie Hythe and New Romney, two more of the original Cinque Ports, linked by the miniature Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway, and the ruins at Lympne of Portus Lemanis, another of the Saxon Shore forts. Romney Marsh, flat and open with its scattered medieval churches, is a complete change from the chalk around Dover.
Calais by ferry
The most unusual of all day trips from Dover is to another country. The ferry from Dover to Calais takes roughly 90 minutes, and a day there allows several hours ashore. Practical details, including border controls and the arrangements for foot passengers, which differ by operator, are covered in the guide to getting to Dover and the ferry port. A valid passport is essential, and the time spent at the port either side of the crossing needs to be built into the day.
Calais itself is best known for Auguste Rodin's sculpture The Burghers of Calais, which stands outside the town hall and commemorates the six citizens who offered their lives to Edward III during the English siege of 1346 and 1347. The town was English for more than two centuries afterwards, until 1558. Lace-making made its fortune in the nineteenth century and is the subject of a museum. A short drive west along the coast is Cap Blanc-Nez, where the French twin of the Dover Patrol Memorial at St Margaret's looks back across the Strait towards the white cliffs; on a clear day each headland can be seen from the other.
Few places are tied to each other by so many kinds of crossing. Captain Matthew Webb came ashore at Calais in August 1875 after nearly 22 hours in the water, the first person to swim the Channel. Louis Bleriot took off from the French coast near Calais in July 1909 and landed beside Dover Castle after the first flight across. Exactly fifty years later, in July 1959, the SRN1 made the first hovercraft crossing of the Channel, from Calais to Dover.
The year in Dover
Dover's calendar follows the sea and the seasons more than any fixed programme of events. No dates are given here, because events move from year to year; the town and district councils and the local tourism site publish what is on.
Spring brings the chalk downland back to life. Skylarks sing over the cliff top, fulmars and kittiwakes return to the cliff ledges, and the first flowers appear on the grassland at Langdon and Samphire Hoe. On St George's Day the Zeebrugge Bell, presented to Dover by the people of Zeebrugge after the First World War, is rung at the Old Town Hall in honour of the Dover Patrol and the Zeebrugge Raid of 1918. In spring the castle and the other big sites return to their full season of opening.
Summer is the busy season in every sense. The orchids and sainfoin flower on the cliffs, the port has its heaviest days, and the harbour fills with sailing boats, rowing crews and Channel swimmers in training. Regattas have been part of the summer in Dover since Victorian times; old photographs show crowds lining the Promenade Pier on Regatta Day and the seafront packed for Regatta Week. Other old fixtures have faded away: the Charlton Fair on the green, held each July for centuries, and Cricket Week at the Crabble Athletic Ground belong to the photographs now.
Autumn is often the best time to visit. The summer crowds thin out, the light over the Channel is clear and the French coast is at its sharpest. In November, Remembrance has a particular weight in Dover. The town's War Memorial, the bronze figure of Youth by the Dover-born sculptor Reginald Goulden, was unveiled by Vice-Admiral Sir Roger Keyes in November 1924 and rededicated after the Second World War to the dead of both wars. Dover was also where the body of the Unknown Warrior was landed from HMS Verdun in November 1920, with people lining the cliffs to watch, before it was taken by train to London and Westminster Abbey.
Winter is quieter and more dramatic. Storms throw spray over the harbour walls and occasionally disrupt the ferries, and the castle has traditionally opened on fewer days and closed over Christmas. On a cold, clear morning, though, the cliffs, the empty seafront and the floodlit keep are as good as Dover gets. It was in winter, on Christmas Eve 1914, that the first bomb ever to fall on England landed near Dover Castle.
The rest of what the town has to offer, in any season, is gathered in the guide to things to do in Dover.