Dover Castle, Award!, ROW80, and Romance Reviews

hanks 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?