Dover/Calais

Saturday's fine weather turned awful Sunday. The captain of the "Pride of Kent" described the Channel as in a "violent gale." Winds of 75 mph, gusts to 90. Our departure was delayed 2 hours; high seas and higher winds; lots of very sick people, but the Dramamine worked for us.

So the Grey Wanderer has had its last boat ride for a while, and we are back in beautiful France.

Our three months+ in the UK were not nearly enough. The last week, we kept asking ourselves if we really had to leave. But the weather kept getting worse and worse and answered that question. So now we're heading west along the Normandy coast, turning south, eventually, and looking forward to some sun and some warmth.



Dover Beach

..."Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night. "

--Matthew Arnold, 1867 (the whole poem is at

http://www.eecs.http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~keith/poems/dover.html)

 

Ferry traffic

 

The harbor exit, leaving in a "violent gale"

 

Ships passing

 

A really big one

 

White cliffs of Calais

Calais beach and harbor entrance