The Un-White Un-Tower

Sorry about the wait between posts, as it happened finals week fell right between our trip to Windsor and our second group trip (and my eighth) to London's Westminster area. I found that very disorienting and now that I'm home, it won't happen again.

We started the day again with the typical 2-hour bus trip up to Westminster, and a fairly large portion of the group was beginning to get sick of London by this point. But we couldn't rightly go to England and not see the Tower of London, that's crazy-talk. And admittedly, once people saw some of the stuff that's inside the Tower, we changed our minds.

When someone thinks about a tower now, they generally think about something like a vertically-elongated rectangle; something significantly taller than it is wide. The Normans would like to take this opportunity to defy you.

The only thing that makes the White Tower an actual tower are the spires at the four corners, which are, if we are honest with ourselves, very typical of Norman keep construction (see the post on Dover if you think I'm lying). Further, the only thing that makes the tower white as such is the corner masonry.

But try to keep this in perspective, as I'm not doing at all: when it was built, this was the tallest structure in England. It remained so for some time, too.

Not that the London Skyline will help you remember that. That giant easter egg that looks like an Arcology from Sim City is the Swiss Re Tower, or so my impeccable sources at Google Earth say.

But even with all those marks against it, the tower is interesting for its historic value. Not that it has a particularly benevolent history, especially given its use during Henry VIII's reign and the oppression and murder of the Catholics, by which I mean Queen Victoria I's reign. We all have our political heroes, but the Tower makes it clear that your political hero probably shouldn't be a Tudor.

Exhibit A: Traitor's Gate. If you were a political prisoner during the Tudor dynasty you would be brought through this gate to your inevitable imprisonment, probable torture, and maybe your execution if it's a slow Saturday.

Fortunately, it's not all bad. A good example of perhaps a brighter period in the Tower's history is the torture chamber...

Ok, well maybe there's something else...

Ok, that's bad but it wasn't all like that...

This is clearly not going to improve. Moving right along to something less horrific than the Tudors.

Most of the cells for political prisoners are in the perimeter wall and not the keep itself. The keep is now home to an impressive collection of field armor as well as an array of weaponry from various eras in English history. And luckily for all of us, we were allowed to take pictures here.

Something that I hadn't really realized was that children would sometimes be present in combat; obviously a child soldier is nothing new to the world but apparently, some rich lords would bring their children into battle with them often enough that they would have a suit of armor made for their child.

Sort of like a construction worker getting his son a miniature hardhat, I suppose. But this wasn't an isolated incident, either. Some of the more impressive suits of armor were actually made for children, including these two.

At a guess, these two suits look to be built for 13- or 14-year-olds, and the previous suit perhaps for someone perhaps 9 to 11 years old. Certainly no older than that. Not that these particular children would actually participate in the melee, but they would be there on the field with their dads, learning the trade they would inevitably be involved in later in life.

Then there's our dear old friend, Henry VIII again.


His paranoia about having a male heir might be obvious here. This suit of armor is impressive because it is one of perhaps 8 in the world to be fully articulated with no gaps. Moving on to someone with good taste, there's this suit made for the Earl of Worchester.

The Captain enjoyed looking at this as much as I did. The gilding is present but not too flamboyant, The helmet is classy as can be, and there are no distracting protrusions. This is a man who was very ready to defend his Earldom's reputation for good taste, and would continue that legacy even today with a particular type of sauce that you may know by his name (fact check needed).

Beyond the armor, there was also the armory, which looked like something out of The Matrix (the first, cool one; not the later two philosophical suckfests). Guns - lots of guns.

So many guns, that they decided to use them as decorations for lack of enough people to actually shoot with them.


Obviously if you were a noble, you could afford an extremely expensive, very elaborate firearm. The only person who would have had the wherewithal to own this weapon, though, would be Duke Nukem.

When you've locked up the people you're most likely to shoot in the tower already, and you've got your torture devices working on them as it is, you realize just how pretty guns really are and you want to put them on everything. Guns are like ketchup for Royal interior decorators.

Not sure how to fill that patch of lawn that isn't growing properly? Put guns on it.

Some of these cannons were captured, and others just tossed there for decorative purposes. Yet just like Windsor, the Crown is making no effort at all to return these priceless bits of history to their home nations. They captured them fair and square, no use whining about it now.


Much of the scenery at the Tower couldn't hold a candle to Windsor, but that's to be expected. Even so, some of the courtyard was still worth taking a long look at. This is another one of those sites where the Romans built first, then the next guys knocked it down and built something else on top of it. The Roman wall is still standing in a number of places.

And just as a side note, there's an old superstition that says if the ravens ever leave the Tower of London, England will fall. Not leaving anything to chance, the ravens are now caged there. Let's see you deal with that, you stupid ominous portent!

The Tower Bridge is in the background here, and its actually quite a bit cooler than the crappy tourist t-shirts suggest. The paint is bright, the towers are clean, and it really is quite impressive to walk on. There are very expensive tours of the towers that will let you cross on the upper walkways, but I gave it a miss because I was short on both time and money by the time I got over to it.

Obviously the tower bridge isn't from the same era as the Tower of London is and didn't serve the same purpose. But it's one more of those incredibly impressive things that just don't exist in the United States, and probably never could.

The cost to maintain a heritage site like this is astronomical, and tourism doesn't always pay for the whole mess. But from the bridge, one can see the entire tower complex, the more interesting bits of the London skyline, and the HMS Belfast - a warship that was moored in the Thames river to become a Naval Museum.


On the same day, we would also see the rebuilt Globe Theater and the newly opened Tate Modern Art gallery, both a stone's throw from the Millenium Bridge. All that will be in the next post though, as clearly we covered enough ground in one day for several posts and to lump them all together would be punishing.

Windsor Castle

I really have to begin by saying that since I wasn't allowed to take pictures inside the castle, there's no way I could really capture the pure opulence of the place. It's the largest castle still being lived in today, and the inside of every bit of it was designed for no other purpose than to make your jaw hit the floor. I'll have to find a book on the treasures that are inside, because there are many and some of them defy belief.

Of the things we did see, we arrived in just enough time to catch a glimpse of the changing of the guards, which is actually done in parade formation with a marching band right on the streets of Windsor; they do it every day, so every day they stop traffic on a couple of streets for this procession.

The guys in the overcoats with the instruments are in traditional Blues & Royals uniform, but the guards at Windsor don't look like this; they're the guys in the back with the more subtle dress uniforms. And fully functional Lee-Enfield L85 rifles, bayonets fixed.
You've probably been hearing a fair amount about these guys, what with Prince Harry being called back from Afghanistan. A lot of people my age here view the royals as money-sucking sponges with no purpose, but Harry has been given a lot of respect lately.

The streets of Windsor themselves are very quaint; they're exactly what people think when they think about an English city, so long as they don't think about London. It's very pretty, even with the amount of tourists present.

Security here was tight, with an x-ray machine and metal detector. Fortunately, you were free to roam once you were checked in. This was likely the first thing you saw after grabbing your audio-tourguide.


The round tower in the back with the flag flying from it is, predictably, known as The Round Tower. The flag flying from it signals that a member of the royal family is in residence, but which one is debatable because we never saw them.

There are signs everywhere telling you to keep off the grass, probably because it looks as green as it does in the picture for a reason; and that reason is not allowing tourists to tromp all over the Queen's lawn. The garden on the hill of the Round Tower is a good example of what happens when kids aren't allowed to stomp on vegetation.

Aside from being just plain dazzling, the castle is also very heavily fortified; it's been built and rebuilt over the course of roughly eight hundred years, always with the notion that it may well have to defend the Monarch at some point. Which is why passages like this exist here.


The passage empties out at the top of a very big yard that's mostly paved by now, but from there one can see the Round Tower gardens again, St. George's Chapel, and head one of two ways further to see the interior of the castle, after a bit of a walk. And while you're in this courtyard, you'll see the guards again.

Amateurs. We got ours to laugh; they're not supposed to but we're talented like that.

As I said, St. George's Chapel is here too. It's being renovated so the inside isn't much to look at. But the outside is impressive.


This is where Henry VIII is buried, but he's a butthead of epic proportions so we won't talk about him and instead we'll look at the heraldic animal sculptures on the roof.

I apologize for the blur; it's a 12x zoom lens and it was after my coffee break. Hopefully, you can clearly see the ferocious goat, duck, and lion each holding a shield with a knight's heraldry on it. I personally thought this was cool, and now I'd like my business cards to be held by a mean-looking duck.

here's St. George's from another perspective, further down in the courtyard.


Every one of those spires along the top is a different animal holding a spear, and no two of them look to be the same.

On the other side of the castle, there's this; a massive internal courtyard that is iconic of Windsor, so I had to take a picture. With my new touring partner, Captain Ed, in the shot.


You'll be seeing more of the Captain.

There are dozens more pictures of this place but if I posted them all it would take forever. And that doesn't include the pictures I wasn't allowed to take.

Pictures of things like:
- Gilded cielings
- Rembrandt paintings of nearly everyone
- Henry VIII's field armor
- A jade vase taller than I am
- Medieval armor and armaments basically everywhere
- A flintlock rifle with a heart-shaped barrel
- About a dozen other flintlocks that must be priceless
- Captured treasures from all over the British Empire

Its worth a side note to say that any items that have been captured are noted that way; this isn't like a museum where they're concerned with it's nature as an artifact and will negotiate it's return to its homeland. Sorry, if the Queen wants to keep it, even if you lost it two hundred years ago in battle, you're out of luck.

Our next trip is to London again, for the Tower and the Globe Theater. I'll have more then.

London's Government District

The Westminster portion of London is a lot like the congressional mall in Washington, DC. Having never been there (to DC), I think it's fairly close to the mark because short of seeing monuments and vast government buildings, there's not much in the way of other entertainment. Or, you know, anything at all.

What Westminster does have is a very large array of, predictably, government buildings as well as historical monuments. One never travels far without seeing a statue dedicated to various regiments of Her Majesty's Armed Forces, or other historical leadership figures. Field Marshal Montgomery has at least five or six commemorations somewhere in the area. Unfortunately, pictures of those commemorations and monuments are on 35mm, and hence not actually available for me to put up.

So for the record, those government buildings look mostly like these ones.


Another central figure is St. James Park; basically the front lawn of Buckingham Palace. At one time it was actually a vast menagerie, and used to contain a wine-drinking elephant and, among other extremely hazardous wildlife from various parts of the old empire, a crocodile that they turned loose in the pond. Neither of those things are still there, and if they were I'd probably have pictures on 35mm anyway. But, either way, this is what the park looks like from in front of Buckingham Palace.


At the center in the background, the ferris-wheely thing is the London Eye. It's 450 feet tall. I'm going on it the next time I'm in London and nobody can stop me. Way over on the right in the background is the clock tower at St. Stephen's, that houses Big Ben (which is actually the bell, not the whole tower). I have great shots of that, predictably, on 35mm. And also I'm much closer, so that helps too.

Here's me in front of Buckingham Palace. The flag isn't up, so the royal family wasn't there at the time, but that's ok. I didn't want to see them that day anyway.


So for the record, the reason I have so many shots on old-timey film and so few on digital is because I abjectly failed to remember my photo card for the digital camera during this trip. But I will try to get those photos developed in such a way that I can post them another time. Hopefully soon.

This building is called Horseguards. It's the command center for the royal family's Household Cavalry. It used to be a military command center up until 1904, but now it's mostly just pretty.


Next post is on Windsor Castle, which I've already been to but I still haven't gotten my head entirely around it. But I actually have serviceable digital photos this time. So there.

Steve conquers Spain

I just wanted to quickly post that Steve and I just spent some time together in Valladolid, Spain. Here are some pictures from our adventure.

Dover: Defining "Awesome" Since 80 AD

This is the modern port city of Dover, as taken from the approach to Dover Castle.


Dover is very well known for it's trademark white cliffs and the castle there which has never been taken; in it's current form it is approaching 900 years old and no siege has ever been successful in wrenching it from the grasp of whoever held it.


It sits on a very tall hill at the English side of the shortest sea crossing between the British Isles and literally anywhere else. The Romans built lighthouses here in about 80 AD (one of which is still standing), the Normans put a castle here upon invading in 1066 AD, and Henry II built a new keep and began fortifying the defenses between 1168 and his death in 1189.


Both of Henry II's sons would add on to the defenses with walls and moats and really, really steep hills.


The castle resisted a 4-month-long siege by the French in 1216. The French considered laying another siege, but realized that they didn't have the manpower after some very ugly losses in a number of other battles, and gave up.


Dover played no small part in securing England then, and the same was true several hundred years later. Dover is also the site of some secret tunnels, first built in the Napoleonic era and added onto during the Second World War. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures inside the tunnel complex, as they're selling a book with those pictures in it. So now, pictures are unrelated to my commentary.


During WWII, these tunnels acted as a switchboard for British military communications, an artillery command center, a surgical hospital, and a strategic planning center for several naval operations, the most well-known of which is Operation Dynamo: the evacuation of British forces from Dunkirk. It was organized by Vice Admiral Bertram Ramsay from what is now known as the Admiralty Casemate - a section of tunnel that he devised the operation in and oversaw its execution, often for 23 hours a day, sleeping for an hour per night.


Ramsay and Churchill expected to save about 45,000 soldiers with this effort. At the time, there were about 200,000 British soldiers that had been trapped. Under ideal circumstances, they expected to save about a quarter of their forces, and that's to say nothing of the French soldiers who were trapped, and who numbered about 60,000 less than the British.


But between the Allied forces holding the Dunkirk perimeter and the Royal Navy's effort commanded by Ramsay, and the flood of civilian volunteers who piloted their small boats over 20 miles of open ocean and another 20 of French coastline to lend a hand, in ten days the effort had retrieved 330,000 soldiers. The evacuation has been widely regarded in England as a miracle, and there's little wonder as to why.


The best views of Dover are from Admiralty Overlook, very close to where Ramsay would have overseen his operation.


By the way, it's also worth noting that the wind at Dover while we were there was somewhere between 40 miles per hour and 'absolutely terrifying'.

Next post: First trip to London.