Dover and Fan Bay Deep Shelter

 

Barb was keen to see the ‘White Cliffs of Dover’.  As it’s an easy train ride from Canterbury, we decided to do a day trip there and do a bit of a walk along the Coastal Path.  First we looked around Dover town for a bit – I was surprised at how small it is – and visited the museum.  It’s actually very good and has lots of information about the town’s origins and history.

There’s also a display about the Royal National Lifeboat Institute which had one of its first stations in Dover.

Another display is about cross-channel swimming.  I had no idea that so many people have swum it!  These include, of course, our very own Marilyn Bell and Cindy Nicholas.

To get to the coastal path, we had to walk through the town, along its waterfront promenade and past the ferry port.  Eventually, we climbed up a long flight of steps and were in the open with glorious views of sheep and chalk cliffs:

At the visitor center we found that we were quite close to the Fan Bay Deep Shelter and that tours of these tunnels could be had.  The volunteers provided us with helmets and headlamps and took us down into the cold, wet tunnels.  These were dug out of the chalk in WW2 when gun emplacements were built nearby.  They were supposed to provide living accommodations for the gun crews who worked shifts to provide a lookout around the clock. 

In fact, the tunnels proved to be unhealthy places to live as they were so damp and poorly ventilated.  Mold grew everywhere and metal rusted quickly.  In the end, the tunnels were used as air-raid shelters while the crews lived in Nissen huts on the top of the cliffs.

The tunnels were abandoned in the 1970s only to be rediscovered in 2012 and opened to visitors by the National Trust.