Dover Castle, Award!, ROW80, and Romance Reviews

Thanks so much to Trisha at WORD + STUFF for the Great Comments Award!

What the award's about: People who leave great comments on our blogs!

What I have to do: Award it to people who are great commenters on my blog. I love it when fellow bloggers drop by!

Who I'm passing the award on to: Trisha had the great idea to check the comments widget, to see who comments the most. I went ahead and installed the widget but it doesn't show anything...

So instead of fiddling with it, I'll just pass on the award to everyone that's been by this week!

While I was exploring widgets, I also added a 'most popular' posts widget and discovered that my current top three posts are:

Character questionnaire for Rosa in 1492
Severus Snape
and
Unusual Research Topics

I'm glad two of them are related to my stories!

Speaking of which... I've been keeping to my new schedule and ROW80 goals, and editing on Monday and Wednesday nights. I can't wait to finish this round and return to drafting, so I can fill in all the missing scenes. But this step is definitely necessary, for me to see what the overall arcs of Ayten's look like.

And speaking of romance stories, I've got news: our 100 Romances Blog is accepting new reviewers. Come join the reading fun!

In other news: Remember the Campaign Challenges ebook, released after Rach Harrie's Third Campaign? The final tally for the donations received for the Help Harry Help Others cancer research fund is 200 dollars!

And now, Dover Castle! Hilary featured this castle during the A-Z Challenge, and I was lucky enough to visit it last month. Bear in mind that these are extremely random shots.

For instance, I don't know anyone who reads all the instructional placards in a museum; I tend to skim them, and take photos of those that remind me of times, places and people that I'm already interested in. For instance, I don't see how reading something as beginner-level as this:
can give you any kind of idea of the history of Canada and the United States, as opposed to, say, reading Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series.

On the other hand, I take photos of placards like this:
and this:
mainly to remind myself of what it is I'm looking at,
when I go back through all our photos of landmarks such as:
the Roman lighthouse
and the Anglo-Saxon church.
Then there're random photos like this one, of wartime slogans:
See where it says "when in doubt, brew-up"? The first thing I thought of was that scene in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, where Harry, Ron and Hermione are consoling Hagrid:

"Harry and Hermione looked at Ron to help them. 'Er--shall I make a cup of tea?' said Ron.
Harry stared at him. 'It's what my mum does whenever someone's upset,' Ron muttered, shrugging."

Dover castlegrounds has everything:
the aforementioned Roman lighthouse and Anglo-Saxon church, a maze of tunnels underneath the hill used most recently during WWII (Churchill!) (and even as a hospital some years after!),
and of course the castle itself:

Of course, being me, I'm all interested in Charles II and the connections to his queen:

But there was also Elvis! Meeting the Queen's Regiment in Germany, 1959:

Inside the castle, there's a wonderfully authentic hall:

and I got to play the scribe:

The next day we were in Ramsgate; this is Dover from Ramsgate, a 40km distance:

While were in Dover, we took the train over to Pluckley, apparently the most haunted village in England.
It's also where The Darling Buds of May was filmed, and we had a drink at the pub near the train station:

On the way, we picked up a bag of chips/crisps:
There's a note on the back about the village where the crisps are made, Biddenden:
"The lovely Wealden village of Biddenden is famous for the legend of the conjoined Biddenden Maids, born in 1100, who established a charity to help the poor that continues to this day."

I finally had a chance to look up the tale, and while the charity has indeed been around for 400 years, the legend may not be true, according to Wikipedia: "Although the annual distribution of food and drink is known to have taken place since at least 1605, no records exist of the story of the sisters prior to 1770."

Panoramic shot of Dover!

I hope everyone's enjoying these posts. I've got higher resolution images if anyone would like to see them.

The more I share here, the less inclined I am to start work on a scrapbook. Do you find it easier to share photos online nowadays, or do you still prefer printed snapshots?

Comments

Claudia Lefeve said…
Great pics! Did you see anything unusual in the haunted village?
EM Castellan said…
This is why I love doing the blog hop from one ROWer to another: one minute I'm on the blog of a writer who lives in Connecticut,USA, the next I'm visiting your blog where you posted pictures of Dover Castle, which happens to be five minutes away from my home... Great pictures, by the way! Have a great week!
Nadja Notariani said…
I used to scrapbook all the time, but now, I confess to posting online and keeping digital records.

Your photos are lovely. I take pics of interesting placards, too. A few years ago I was finally able to spend a day at Ellis Island, and the museum pics filled my camera. I've never visited a castle, so I'll live vicariously through your snapshots for now....Ha!

Have a wonderful Sunday, Deniz.
alberta ross said…
so glad you had one sunny day there:) - used to live in that neck of the woods myself - glad you enjoyed yourself.

keep smiling and all the bst for this coming week
Raelyn Barclay said…
I used to post quite a bit online on my personal blog but ran out of space and not willing to pay for more, LOL. I love scrapbooking though I don't do every single picture.

I haven't been to Dover yet. Great pictures and I do the same thing, taking pictures of the info to help me identify the rest.

Wishing you a fabulous upcoming week.
S.P. Bowers said…
I've never been a scrapbooker so going from pictures in books to pictures on CD hasn't been hard. It's kind of nice actually, since we needed to have them electronic for adoption paperwork. though I do like to have some physical pictures available.
Nas said…
Hi Deniz,

Thanks for sharing these photos. Lovely to see you playong at scribe!
Trisha said…
The only time I went to Dover, it was night already & we were getting on the ferry to Calais. So I haven't really seen it properly. Someday I will!

Loved your walk-through of your experience there. Great photos, too!
Trisha said…
P.S. I had problems with the top comments widget too, and I think I had to swap it for a different one at one point. I can't even remember how I fixed it, but for a while there it wasn't working for me either.
Unknown said…
I always have grand scrapbooking plans, but they peter out when I'm about halfway finished with the book. Now, I'll only print off a few key pictures, and I'm happy to keep the rest online!

Thanks for sharing!
Susan Fields said…
Great photos - thanks for sharing! I used to be great at keeping scrapbooks, but now that everything's digital I hardly ever print anything out. I'm going to make scrapbooks for my kids when they graduate high school, though - and that time is coming sooner than I like to think about! - so it's going to be a major job to go through all those digital photos and pick out what I need for the scrapbooks.
nutschell said…
awesome pictures! I saw DOver castle from afar when we dropped by for a quick stop to see the white cliffs. Wish I had the time to go inside :)
Nutschell
www.thewritingnut.com
Carol Riggs said…
Love those castle pics--and you as a scribe! :) Yeaaah, I rarely print up things anymore; it's all digital. Congrats on getting the Comment Award!!
DL Hammons said…
*sigh* Such awesome pics. Thank you for sharing them with us! :)
Li said…
I thought I was the only one who photographed plaques and informational placards! :-) I'd love to visit some of those castles one day. For now, I'm stuck with places like the Cloisters in NY (building and contents shipped over here from Europe, mainly France).
Talli Roland said…
Lovely photos! Isn't the UK fabulous for all the history everywhere? I love it!
Congrats on the award. Lovely photos.
Deniz Bevan said…
Thanks Claudia! Nah, unfortunately we weren't there long enough. I did maybe sense something at night in our 15th Century inn at Canterbury, but I'm a deep sleeper - I didn't wake up long enough for anything to happen.

You're right, Em, ROW80 hops are great for that!

Thank you, Nadja! I love digital cameras because I can take as many placard photos as I'd like.

Thanks so much and all the best to you, alberta!

Hope you have a great week, too, Raelyn. I'm still hoping to scrapbook this trip...

You're right, Sara, I still find photos more 'real' if they're printed.

Thanks Nas!

I'd love to take that ferry someday, Trisha!

Good idea, Lara!

You're right, Susan, sometimes it takes hours to select photos!

Thanks, nutschell, Carol and DL!

Oh, Li, the Cloisters is still on my list of places to visit!

Thanks Talli and Romance!
online diploma said…
This is my first time i visit here. I found so many entertaining stuff in your blog, especially its discussion. From the tons of comments on your articles, I guess I am not the only one having all the enjoyment here! Keep up the good work.
Hi Deniz .. glad I got here eventually - your photos are great and you've got some excellent views of Dover - love the outside shots and the Hall ..

Did you see the Mappa Mundi? and you've told me about the haunted village - and then there's the myth about the maidens .. isn't that fascinating - true or not .. something must have happened for the charity to be formed ...

Great trip you had ..

A scrap book's nice - as others can see what you've done who perhaps don't go on the computer much - also you can look through them at your leisure and not necessarily connected to some screen!

Good luck with all the drafting etc .. cheers Hilary
Deniz Bevan said…
Thanks so much for coming by, Hilary! I'm glad you liked it :-)
I think I took a photo of the Mappa Mundi too! But it didn't come out so well, unfortunately.
I'm still hoping to scrapbook all of these photos, once I catch up with scrapbooking our last two trips!