Yesterday, having travelled from Manchester by train, we stayed at the Dover Spa Hotel which is housed within a crescent of 17th century buildings.
It overlooks the Dover Beach between the car ferry port (Eastern Docks and the former Dover Marine Station and the nearby Western Docks). This area is being ‘reinvented’ as the Western Docks Marina and the commercial docks complex.
We left Dover shortly before 4:00 p.m. and were a few miles off the south coast and the white cliffs to allow cross Channel traffic to make more speed than us. By 5:00 p.m. we were passing Margate en route to Harwich, to top up supplies before the journey across the North Sea to Stavangar in southern Norway.
As we write we are en route to Harwich at 8:00 p.m. By 10:00 p.m. we had arrived at Harwich International Port, formerly known as Parkeston Quay, where dedicated trains brought passengers from Manchester en route to the Netherlands. Today this route is used by ferries such as that of Stena Line that we saw being loaded for the overnight journey to Rotterdam.
