Hello, so far this week has been completely pants, I’m not having a good time at the moment. When I left work on Monday, I needed pain killers due to the stabbing pain between my shoulders. After I’d removed the daggers that were causing the pain, I gave my current place of employment some serious consideration. I came to the conclusion that it’s time I moved on. I’ve been in the same job for almost fourteen years now, and I think I’m done! It wouldn’t be so bad if I could get a better position in the job, but it’s a very small company with what, at times, seems like a 9 person management team. In fact rather than getting further up the promotional ladder, I’ve chosen to step off of it. To be honest I felt that my position was nothing more than a figurehead anyway. Any decision I made was either overturned or dismissed. It seemed that the only real way to get any of my ideas and suggestions considered was to get someone else to come up with them.
On a happier note there are plans in place for a walk along the cliff top path from Capel to Dover on the fourth of July. I’m really looking forward to this. It’s been many years since I last did that walk; I used to walk to all sorts of places in my younger days. Sadly I let the past time slip away from me. There’s some fantastic remnant of first and Second World War fortifications and military outposts, I do hope that the people that come along on the walk realise that I plan to bore them silly with short descriptions of some of the places we will visit. The good thing is that it doesn’t involve straying too far off the route as most, if not all, are part of the route. The exception to this is the plan to walk part of the Western Heights trail. Not much, just the area known as Saint Martin’s Battery, down the grand Shaft Barracks, now completely demolished with just the foundations remaining. We would then walk up the steps and head over to the drop Redoubt fort and walk around two thirds of the base of the building. I shall babble on about the history of the area, explaining how and why the defences were built. Finally we’ll head down to Cowgate Cemetery and eventually find something resembling a decent pub for a pint or two and maybe an ice cream on the sea front.
With luck, following on from the brief introduction to the Napoleonic Defences in Dover, I’m going to try and convince as many of my friends as possible to join me in a more in depth exploration of the area, culminating in a visit to the interior of the North Detached Bastion. In some respects I consider myself to have had a fantastic childhood; I had the heights and the Castle as my playground. Me and my mates could lose ourselves for days in the tunnels and buildings and we never got bored. We were always finding new places to clamber into and, with the exception of my broken ankle, we never got hurt. The ankle was totally my fault, I was in a new tunnel, new to us anyway, with my friend, as we were exploring the passage we were in I saw that at the south end of the passage it seemed to head down. So I headed off, with no torch, a promptly fell down a ten foot deep man hole. It took me about an hour to climb out and another two to walk the quarter of a mile to my mates’ house. When we got there his dad saw that something was wrong and immediately ran me to the hospital. He was the only other person who knew what really happened. The problem was that back then, I was about 13 or 14, it was a bit questionable as to if we should have been in there. Beside if the local rozzers had learned that someone had been hurt in there they would have had the MOD and the council seal our playground off, not to mention the prison service getting wind of it. Now consider if you will that one of your best mates has fallen down a deep hole, broken his ankle and is a bit worried about how he’s going to make his way out of the afore mentioned hole. How much support would you give to that friend by way of comfort and aid? Well, the mate in question, and you know who you are! Nearly wet himself he was laughing so much. I must admit that when I did finally get out of the pit, I was sort of half laughing half sobbing in pain. Still when my ankle had healed we were back in there and followed the stairway down, only to find that it lead to a twenty foot long passageway that ended in a vertical shaft heading up to ground level. It will be nice to revisit the NDB after all these years; I’m really keen to see how it’s faired over the passage of time. I’ll post some pics on here when we return; hopefully it won’t be too long after the Capel to Dover walk, which, of course, will have pictures and hopefully some video on YouTube. I’ll get some video of the Heights trip as well. Who knows we may even try our hand at a bit of ghost hunting whilst we’re there. I’m fairly sure Mankey could pull off an Yvette Fielding impersonation. :0)
Until next time
Toodles
