No big Deal

Deal - or, at least , the bit of it near the castle - is not an especially attractive place. Pointing a cannon at this hideous building seems appropriate. Putting the architect in the stocks even more so.

Deal Castle itself is more of a fort than a castle. It was built by Henry VIII as an artillery position to guard against invading fleets crossing the Channel. The boy and I were a little underwhelmed by it, to be honest. It also suffered from a particular bugbear of mine which is the reliance on audio guides - those gadgets they give you to wear round your neck and you have to tap a number in to get the right audio explanation of whatever it is you're looking at. They can be quite good, but I like to have signs and visual displays to read so I can choose not to have something clamped to my ear the whole time but still get some idea of what I'm looking at. At Deal, they didn't even have signs telling you which number on the audio guide was for which part of the castle thereby allowing you to make selective use of it. All the instructions for the audio guide were on the audio guide (and, boy, do English Heritage audio guides go on a bit).

We then walked down to Deal beach, which was a lovely shingle beach. The boy enjoyed throwing pebbles into the sea which he said was like playing Battleships on the iPad. So much for simple pleasures.

We had a pizza in Canterbury and then a lazy afternoon back at the house. I'm missing home and North Devon a lot. I'll be very glad to be heading back on Sunday.