A Summer Weekend in Dover

Officially, the first day of summer this year in the northern hemisphere is 21st June (I know, I just looked it up!), but personally, I've always found it easier to categorise the seasons by months, like so:

Summer: June, July, August

Autumn: September, October, November

Winter: December, January, February

Spring: March, April, May

...which makes the 1st June the first day of summer. So, when Claudio and I went for a weekend away in Dover from the 1st to the 2nd of June, it felt like a great way to start my favourite season of the year!

We started our trip by taking the Elizabeth Line to Farringdon, followed by the tube to King's Cross/St Pancras. As we had a little bit of spare time before our train to Dover, we had a look around St Pancras International station. It was exciting to see the Eurostar trains going to France and Belgium!

Despite the fact that Dover is quite far from London, the train we took was high speed, and we were there in about an hour. Arriving at Dover Priory Station, I was happy to find some vintage travel posters, which I always love seeing!

The retro vibes continued once we reached our hotel, the Best Western Premier Dover Marina Hotel & Spa. This is one of those grand, 19th century English seaside hotels, located right on the beach. I'd always wanted to stay in a hotel like this!

Before checking in, we had a walk around the beach and the pier. From outside the hotel, we could see the iconic sights of the castle and the white cliffs, which was very exciting!

We entered the hotel and checked into our room, which was small, but very cosy, with views out across the beach and the sea. I'd done a search with flexible dates on the Hotels.com app, so had got the room for well under £100. I'd then made a bid of an extra £10 for a room with a sea view, which was accepted. All in all, I feel it was a pretty great deal!

While bidding for the room upgrade, I'd also added another extra to our stay: afternoon tea at the hotel's Churchill Bar & Lounge! This afternoon tea only cost around £20 per person, which I thought was quite a good deal, as in London, you'd generally be paying upwards of £30-£40.

Everything was so tasty (especially the scones!) and it was made extra special by the fact that we were sitting in the window, right next to the beach.

Later in the afternoon, we went down to the beach. In my opinion, it's not a proper beach holiday without a swim in the sea, so even though the weather wasn't exactly boiling hot, we still took the plunge and had a quick dip in the English Channel. As you can probably imagine, the water was very, very cold, but we felt amazing afterwards!

We warmed up in the best possible way, by visiting the hotel's spa, which has a steam room, sauna and jacuzzi. Though the steam room was a little too hot for our liking, the jacuzzi was absolutely perfect. It was a super relaxing way to end the day!

Waking up right next to the sea the following morning was very special. We could even see France in the distance, right from our bed!

We started the day with eggs on toast and coffee at Wheeler's Fish & Chips, which is also part of the hotel, before going off to explore.

Our first destination of the day was Shakespeare Beach, a tranquil pebble beach overlooked by cliffs. These are not the famous white cliffs that you see on postcards (those are on the other side of the town), but they were very picturesque.

Our next little adventure was climbing up the hill to the castle. With its steep stone steps surrounded by foliage, the climb reminded me of my hike to Machu Picchu, though, fortunately, it didn't take nearly as long!

We decided not to buy tickets to enter the castle - at £30 per adult, we felt it was just too expensive. (Since moving to Reading, I've been slightly shocked at how expensive most activities and events are around London and the South East!) But at least we were able to walk around it a bit from the outside. It's actually the biggest castle in the entire country, and it was pretty spectacular to see.

Then it was time for even more walking, as we made our way to the National Trust site on the White Cliffs of Dover.

The site has a really nice café and gift shop. Of course, being at the beach, we had to have some ice cream! It gave us energy to continue on with the last bit of our walk to get to the famous viewpoint of the white cliffs.

I'd never been to Dover before, so it was very special to see the cliffs, which are such a famous symbol of Britain. To make things even better, we could see the cliffs of northern France reasonably clearly in the distance. France has always been one of my favourite countries, so it was exciting to be so close!

To sum up, our weekend in Dover was super fun and a much-needed break for both of us. We've had our fair share of stress lately, what with moving house, and in my case, dealing with various issues at work while searching for a new job, and in Claudio's case, trying to get his first job in the UK. Fortunately, the latter is no longer a problem - Claudio has just started a new job, doing the same thing as he was doing back in Chile! It's a real relief, and I'm so proud of him, as the job market is really rough at the moment, and he was thinking he might have to lower his expectations in terms of the sort of role he could aim for. So it's a great achievement for him, and also gives us stability we've never had before (we've never both been in stable, full-time jobs at the same time).

So, overall, our new life in Reading is getting off to a great start, and we plan to have more little adventures like this in the near future!

Ashdown House: A Dutch House in the English Countryside

Ashdown House was the final item on the original list of local places to visit that I made last year, but as the house itself wasn't open to visitors back then, it didn't seem worth going there yet. However, last month the property fully reopened, and we had the opportunity to visit this Wednesday!

The house is a National Trust property located in the North Wessex Downs, with an architectural style inspired by the Netherlands. For this reason, I had particularly wanted to go and see it, as I'm interested in visiting places that are reminiscent of foreign countries, especially during this period of time in which it's so hard to travel abroad. Ashdown was the second Dutch-inspired place I've been to this year - the first one being Westbury Court Garden, which we went to back in April. Although I found Westbury Court Garden a little more interesting and unique, I still enjoyed our trip to Ashdown House. It's smaller than it looks in photos, but it's a very beautiful building.

We were given a tour of the house, which was very interesting and informative, although I've probably forgotten a lot of it already! But I remember that it was built for the queen of Bohemia in the 17th century, and that sadly, it's original purpose was as a hunting lodge for people to kill deer. I'm glad that it's no longer a place for monarchy or cruelty to animals, and that now it's a place for the public to enjoy.

At the end of the tour, we got to climb up to the roof of the house! From there, we could look out across the estate and the rolling countryside beyond. Interestingly, the house is in Oxfordshire, but it is right next to the borders with Berkshire and Wiltshire, so we had views of three different counties.

I feel a slight sense of accomplishment to have now completed my "bucket list" of local destinations. Travelling to a different place (many of them new to me) every week or two has made what has mostly been a very tough time slightly easier, and has provided some much-needed escapism from the monotony of daily life as it is now. Since I started this little project of blogging about local destinations in May 2020, I've visited an Indian palace, a Japanese arboretum, and a Provençal-style lavender field, in addition to this Dutch house and the Dutch garden I mentioned earlier, as well as countless other interesting places. I've learned that, to a certain extent, it's possible to feel like you've travelled to another part of the world without actually leaving the UK, and this is a topic I plan to write more about in the near future... (Edit: I finally wrote a post about this topic, and here it is!)