Lighthouses

We’ve come down to Dover for a ‘Roman Kent’ weekend, with a small group accompanied by an archaeologist and tour manager.  We were supposed to be staying in Canterbury but there was a last minute change of hotel as the UK Government had requisitioned the Canterbury hotel for Afghan refugees.

It didn’t start well yesterday.  After our horrendous journey down we had an initial talk by the archaeologist which, frankly, was disappointing.  The hotel public areas are nice, but our room was awful; little bigger than a shoebox and pretty scruffy.   However, today things have been better.  The archaeologist was very good so must just have been having an off day, and having complained about our room we have been moved to a much nicer one.  Today we were taken to Canterbury and visited some Roman sites around the town, and then came back to Dover where we saw the largest intact painted Roman wall in northern Europe and visited the castle where we saw a Roman lighthouse; the building just to the right of the church in my picture.  It is thought to be the tallest Roman building in the UK and the largest lighthouse still in existence.

One more day here and then we move on for a few days on our own before heading home.