More stripes can be found in the gallery.

The prompt for this weeks gallery was ‘roads i travel’.

I always try to find the road that leads me to light, understanding and happiness.

Finding that road is always a challenge…

More inspiration can be found in the ‘roads i travel’ gallery.

For more of this weeks PhotoHunt pictures check out Whistlestop PhotoHunt.

The booklet tells me that EZ Zoom allows you to zoom in a little closer to an object without the loss of image quality. It does indeed zoom in a little closer but I think more practice is needed…

The Buddha

It was here that there was a bit of a saga about where to eat for lunch.  Two of the party didn’t like the food that was on offer in the first cafe we tried ,which was a shame because there were lots of things that I quite fancied the look of.  We moved on to another cafe where the two people that grumbled didn’t have anything to eat anyway because they weren’t hungry…

The upper chapel is in the first tower over the forebuilding steps immediately above the lower chapel.  Next to it is a small square room, probably designed as the royal pew, with a stone bench for the king.  The chapel itself is a church in miniature, with a tiny nave and chancel.  As with the lower chapel, both royal pew and chapel are notable for the richness of their mouldings: the vault ribs with dog-tooth ornament, the arcaded walls, the shafts and columns with foliated capitals and the chancel arch enriched with chevron decoration.  These closely match contemporary work at Canterbury Cathedral.  Later the chapel was dedicated to Thomas Becket the archbishop murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by four of Henry II’s knights, a few years before the king began his great reconstruction of Dover. *

*Info from the guide book.

It was constructed as an octagonal tower using local flint and Roman bricks, but only its lowest four stages survive. Its rectangular interior had a series of timber-floored chambers; at the top there was probably a platform for some kind of brazier. The lighthouse keeper might have lived in or next to the tower, but no evidence of such occupation has ever been found. It seems likely that the lighthouse ceased to be used regularly after the Romans left in the early fifth century, but a 12th-century reference to a lighthouse keeper here suggests that it may then have again been in operation.

In later years the exterior was refaced and Humphrey, duke of Gloucester rebuilt the top as bell-tower for the neighbouring church between 1415 and 1437.

Next to the lighthouse stands the church of St Mary-in-Castro, Which was built in around 1000.

The reasons for the church’s location on this windswept chalk hill remain unclear.  The most likely explanation is that it was built within a now-vanished late-Saxon burgh, or defensive enclosure.

The church was restored during the 19th century and all though a large part of the church remains original some modifications were made. *

*All information from the guidebook.

The great tower was the last and most elaborate in the tradition of huge rectangular royal great towers, begun in England in the previous century with The Tower of London and Colchester:

The great tower of Dover Castle is the last and grandest of the keeps built by the kings of England in the 11th and 12th centuries.  It was built in 1180-85 by Henry II (r. 1154-89) to provide a palatial setting in which he could welcome visitors to England, in particular those coming on pilgrimage to the new shrine at Canterbury of St Thomas Becket, who was murdered by four of Henry’s knights against the king’s wished in 1170.  The great tower may look like a defensive building but it was a palace, designed for royal ceremony and to house Henry’s household with its various departments on their occasional, brief visits.*

English Heritage have recently redecorated the tower to show how it might have looked like inside the tower when it was newly completed and ready to receive an important visitor.

*From the guide book.