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Sunday, Sep. 13, 2009

Making mother’s dream come true

It isn’t often I can do something on a grand scale for my mother. She never asks for anything. So when she said she wanted to see the White Cliffs of Dover, I jumped on the opportunity to make her dream come true.

With just one week before Avery returned to school, I had to work fast. So I started researching Kent County and where else our journey could take us.

A few days later, with a full tank of gas we began our road trip making our first stop in Rochester visiting Rochester Castle and Rochester Cathedral.

Though I must admit I was most impressed with the cathedral. Its stained glass windows were the most stunning I had seen in my travels since we moved here and in my travels throughout Germany, France and Austria in high school as part of an exchange program. Fittingly, they were heavenly. Most amazingly the cathedral, which is the second-oldest in England, didn’t even charge for admission.

After we gobbled up our picnic, we were back on the road.

Next on our agenda was Richborough Roman Fort, so we entered the address into my GPS and off we went.

It, of course, took us down tons of tiny roads where continuing your journey meant constantly stopping for traffic from the other direction to pass. But, this is customary when driving to out-of-the-way pieces of history here. Eventually we ended up on a road named Richbourough, so I thought we were headed the right direction. Finally, we could see the fort and my GPS said turn right, so right we went. We were so close to the fort at this point I could have reached over the barbed wire fence and touched it, but instead of ending up at an entrance we ended up in someone’s yard. My mother and I couldn’t stop laughing as we winded up and down the roads around the fort without managing to find the entrance. Eventually we managed to get on the right tiny road to visit the Roman fort. Even after our difficulty reaching the fort we embarked on another stop — Deal Castle — where Avery loved crawling through the miniature tunnels.

Then we went to our bed-and-breakfast to recuperate for day two and the Cliffs of Dover. I didn’t just want my Mom to see the cliffs and walk away; I wanted her to have the chance to appreciate its beauty. I decided the four-mile round trip cliff walk to South Foreland Lighthouse would allow us to do just that. No matter how complicated it was to make the cliff walk with a 20-month-old on my back and a 5-year-old at my side, it was worth it. We got to see the splendor of the cliffs, from the cliffs and from atop the lighthouse.

Though no matter how magical our cliff walk was, our trip wasn’t complete.

We continued with a stop at Dover Castle, Walmer Castle, Ightham Mote and Lullingstone Roman Villa before heading home. All of our visits produced special memories and gave us an enhanced appreciation of nature and history. Though seeing my mom’s face as we took in the views of the cliffs and knowing I made her wish come true was the underscore for me.

Amanda Creel, who was a staff writer at the Robins Rev-Up newspaper on Robins Air Force Base, is married to Staff Sgt. Justin Creel, stationed at Royal Air Force Mildenhall in Suffolk, England. Contact her at acreel@macon.com.