Easter Sunday in Engelonde

Despite urging to the contrary, my group traveled on Easter Morning to Dover for a look at Dover Castle and Dover Beach. The castle is an ancient concentric design with a central keep; it is similar to the Tower of London but much larger. The castle commands the famous White Cliffs and occupies such a strategic location that it was known during World War II as "Hell's Corner" due to the constant bombardment. The cliffs are honeycombed with three levels of tunnels used by the British military during World War II.

Dover Castle and the channel from the Keep.






Dover Beach, for centuries a scene of smuggling, legend, and intrigue, is a locale that has inspired writers such as Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities) and Matthew Arnold:

The sea is calm tonight,
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!

Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

It was afternoon before we reached the city of Canterbury, where centuries ago Thomas Beckett was murdered in the Cathedral by barons loyal to his former best friend, King Henry II. For centuries, pilgrims visited his shrine seeking miracles, until King Henry VIII declared himself the head of the Church of England and had Beckett's remains removed. Chaucer tells us of these pilgrims in considerable detail.

And specially from every shire's end
Of Engelonde to Canterbury they wende,
The holy blisful martyr for to seeke
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seke.

The entrance to the medieval city of Canterbury

By afternoon the Easter Services were over, although I did hear that the Archbishop, Rowan Williams, sermonized about the misleading assertions in The Da Vinci Code. The modern city of Canterbury is built around the Cathedral and the walls of the medieval city.



The author mans the battle- ments at Dover Castle.