During thankfully a brief respite in the wet weather the RAS summer outing this year went to Dover Castle perched imposingly on a cliff overlooking the harbour and where there was so much to see a good number of us didn’t manage to see it all. After viewing the adjacent Roman lighthouse and Saxo-Norman church, an unusual guided tour of the castle was conducted by enactors representing the castle’s founder Henry II and members of his dysfunctional family including his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine and son Prince John, as well as son Richard’s fiancée-in-waiting Princess Alice.

Bickering convincingly this group took visitors on a tour of the three principal rooms in the keep, recently refurbished to show their medieval splendour. Those who climbed the winding stairs to the castle tower had a very windy view of a choppy sea and surrounding town. Other attractions included the medieval tunnels under the castle and the White Cliffs Experience demonstrating various wartime defences. Some of us descended into town only to find the museum closed because of a “leak”

There was no view of the famous Bronze Age boat, but this was more than compensated by a visit to the nearby Roman Painted House, which comprised not only the remains of several rooms of a Roman inn which had later been superceded by a Roman Army fort, but an exhibition of many Roman artefacts and a history of the Roman occupation of Britain. And we were able to ride a local bus back up to the castle. A bracing but interesting day.

Yvonne Masson