The White Cliffs Experience – MR2 Kent run, 9 April 2017
The White Cliffs experience is a new Kent Run, organised by Pete Mason from the MR2 Mk1 Club. This was the Sunday when the sun shone all day long and the temperature reached 23°C. With a new route to try out, Pete was slightly apprehensive at first but really pleased that 19 cars turned up for the run: 14 MR2s and five others.
We all met at the Hythe Services on the M20, near Folkestone, where we had plenty of parking space – so much so that we decided to line them all up and take a few photos.
At 11.30am we set off on our country run, but guess what? Someone missed the first turn and those behind him all followed. Typical! They soon realised their error and turned back to join the rest of us, who stopped to wait for them. That was the only time we got separated.
It was a leisurely hour’s drive through the Kent Downs heading towards Canterbury, but once we were about to join the main road we turned and headed back along the A2 towards the White Cliffs of Dover. Shortly after passing the Lydden Hill race circuit we turned off the main road once again onto the country lanes.
Our first stop was for an hour at the Battle of Britain memorial on top of the White Cliffs, a tribute to the pilots who fought the Germans in the sky over the English Channel during World War 2. There was only a chance to glimpse at the memorial, but what we saw was very humbling and made many of us to promise ourselves to return on our own some day to pay our proper respects.
The second part of the run was a bit hazy for me, the author of this report, as I was late getting ready and I missed the boat. By the time I was ready everyone had gone! I knew the route they were heading and thought I could take a short cut to catch them up, but I got caught behind an old lady driver in her granny-wagon on a county road and lost all hope, so I went straight to the last stopping place just outside Dover, called Samphire Hoe. I had never been there before, but I learnt that Samphire Hoe is a new piece of land at the base of the White Cliffs, created by the excavation material from the Eurotunnel during the construction of the Channel Tunnel and is now a wild life nature reserve.
