Spotlight Thursday – Wandering along the White Cliffs of Dover, England

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Spotlight Thursday – Wandering along the White Cliffs of Dover, England

Every Thursday, I will be posting a photo from my travels and a spotlight on the location. Today’s Spotlight Thursday is from my ‘I am going to travel while job hunting trip’ to Europe. Well actually, my plan to spend a couple months in Europe became two weeks in the UK because I pretty much set-up two interviews with in three days of landing in London. As part of the trip, I took the bus down from London to Canterbury and then Canterbury to Dover. Upon arriving at Dover, I visited Dover castle and the newly opened, Dover tunnels. I then took a taxi over to the White Cliffs of Dover.

I stopped at the little gift shop at the start of the cliff hiking trail. I hiked out a couple of miles to the South Foreland lighthouse. It was a windy day long to cliffs but I enjoyed the flat 4-mile hike with stunning views of the cliff face and France.

The White Cliffs of Dover overlook the Strait of Dover. It is 20.7 miles to from Dover to Calais. If I wasn’t driving I would probably have got a ferry from dover to calais though. The hiking trail overlooks the ferry docks. It is amazing how large the ferries are and how many cars are coming and going between England and France. I hiked out to the South Foreland Lighthouse. The lighthouse was built in 1846 and was in use until 1988. The lighthouse helped with navigations around the Goodwin Sands aka ‘The Great Ship Swallower.’ The lighthouse has a map of the shipwrecks in the area. There are over 2000 recorded wrecks.

The 8 miles of cliffs are made of a fine white chalk with black flint streaks. On average, the cliffs retreat about 0.4 in (1 cm) per year. Occasionally, large football sized chunks will fall off so I stayed well away from the edge of the cliffs.

Enjoy this photo of the White Cliffs of Dover, England? Check me out on Instagram @MatDifference for more great photos.

Check out my other photos from Spotlight Thursday.