The following piece was written a number of years ago and self-syndicated to newspaper travel sections. Though I've written many other articles in the meantime, this feature is still one of my favorites because it combines my interests in transportation technology and travel. No attempt has been made to update the information in this article. The Channel Tunnel is, of course, now open.
The salty seaport air wafts far inland, but to touch the history of the place, you have to climb to the very edge of the island country and walk along the tops of the windswept white cliffs. Yes, those cliffs. The white cliffs of Dover.
I had come to look at a hole in the ground that will become one of the technological wonders of the modern world. I was captivated instead by an undulating dirt trail, bordered by tall grass that swayed in a relentless onshore wind, echoing the patterns of the waves down below.
At the base of Shakespeare Cliff, just a stone's throw out from the town of Dover, an army of thousands of workers is tunneling toward the 21-mile-distant shore of France and a future that will change the travel and transportation realities of Europe forever. A few hundred feet above, however, the past reigns.
Squat concrete World War II gun emplacements stare with sightless eyes towards the once-hostile opposite shore of the English Channel. The coastal artillery is gone. But, the bunkers are remarkably well preserved, leaving the visitor wondering whether they have been kept as a memorial to the past, a hedge against future eventualities, or simply because they were so solidly constructed that it would have been too much trouble to tear them down.
In places, however, the trail that wanders along the edge of the cliff takes you even further back. After a bend blocks off the view of both the bustling construction site and the nearby town, and with the wind gusts temporarily drowning out the pounding pile drivers, the scene must be much the same as when troops of the Roman Empire first carried their standards ashore in this same area.
Mostly, though, the presence that hangs heaviest is that of the darkest days of WW II when the Battle of Britain raged in the air overhead. Standing atop one of those grass-covered bunkers, one almost expects a badly battered Lancaster, trailing smoke from a crippled engine, to come lumbering in over the water, struggling for enough altitude to clear the cliffs and attain a crash-landing on friendly ground.
Is there anyone who hasn't seen that scene in one of the countless movies made both during and after that time? Even for someone born after that war was over, someone whose own military service took him to Vietnam on the opposite side of the globe, the fact that these cliffs were once the ramparts of what was left of a free Europe is inescapable.
The presence of history is so tangible because so little has changed. The place looks the same as it looked half a century ago -- and much the same as it must have looked over the centuries before.
There are no historical markers, for none are needed. Nowhere else is the British talent for understatement more appropriate. They haven't even fallen prey to the American obsession of trying to eliminate all hazards for which someone might be held liable. There are no railings along the edge of the cliff. And the visitor can't conceive any form of barrier that wouldn't desecrate the place.
You can leave the footpath and edge outward to get a better view of the place that Dover residents refer to, without much joy, as simply the "the works." Edge outward to peer down on where a continuing stream of narrow-gauge work trains disappears into an access shaft for the Channel Tunnel, but be careful.
Even the footpath along the cliffs is little more than a well-worn narrow rut in the ground. You need solid shoes, preferably hiking boots, for this terrain.
The people of Dover hold little enthusiasm for the technological marvel taking place under their feet. An inquiry at Dover's Priory railway station as to how to get to the tunnel shaft was met with disinterested shrugs.
The taxi driver who agreed to take me there -- or at least as close as possible without actually getting onto the sprawling construction site itself -- echoed that same sentiment but made the reasons for the town's feelings quite clear as he maneuvered his way through the town and up along winding hillside roads in a residential area where his own home was.
"You hear the pile drivers and jackhammers all night long sometimes. Now we've got mud washing down the street every time it rains from where they've dug up the roads to put in power cables out to the works. And they said the tunnel wouldn't have any impact on the town."
But as irksome as the inconveniences of the construction work were to him, his commentary was laced with a deeper note of sadness. What really concerned the residents, was that the tunnel could spell the final doom of the port city that they had grown up in.
The fact that the inconveniences of the construction work are temporary -- completion of the tunnel is scheduled for 1993 -- also means that economic benefits of the construction work will cease at that time. For, though the water-skimming passenger hovercraft still make daily "takeoffs" and "landings" and other ferry craft still ply the choppy Channel waters to a variety of European ports, carrying autos and railway freight cars, the port of Dover has long been in decline.
For business travelers and time-short tourists, the air hop from London to major cities of the continent is not only quicker; it is also more reliable during the stormy seasons. Dover has two railway stations, unusual for a town of its size even on England's dense rail network. Dover Priory is further inland; Dover Marine, as its name implies, is in the heart of the waterfront. (Dover Docks, the third major rail facility in the area is now used mostly for transloading freight cars on ferries; through passenger trains which crossed the channel on ferries, were stopped years ago.)
Dover Marine was once England's gateway to Europe. Now its cavernous trainshed, spanning six tracks of ample length for long-distance trains along with platforms large enough for bustling crowds sees only a scattering of short multiple-unit electric commuter trains made up of vintage cars.
The one open snack bar in the station catered mostly to railway workers rather than travelers during my March visit. Undoubtedly, the pace picks up during the height of the summer tourist season, but it's unlikely that it will ever again reach the level of its heyday.
Despite the sizable construction efforts in evidence at the base of Shakespeare Cliff and the even more substantial support activities slightly further inland which include modern multi-story barracks for the army of workers and huge, completely filled parking lots, which testify to that army's size, the work at Dover is only on an access shaft. The entrance to the railway tunnel will be in nearby Folkstone, which will garner whatever local economic benefits come from the tunnel's operation.
Rail traffic, including freight now transloaded at Dover, will originate and terminate at inland stations and yards.
Even among the thousands of jobs that have come to Dover as part of the project, the taxi driver explained, few went to locals who for generations have been mostly longshoremen and ships' crewmen. The tunneling specialists and engineers were brought in from the outside and spend little of their income locally.
None of that, however, makes the work that is going on at the base of the cliff any less worthy of appreciation.
Narrow gauge work trains with electric locomotives specially designed for this project, able to run on battery power on the surface and from overhead electric lines in the tunnels, shuttle in and out of the access shaft. Cranes load cylindrical sections of pre-cast concrete tunnel liner onto strings of flatcars. Large cement silos refill cars for that cargo.
The locomotives are equipped with cog wheels to use the rack-and-pinion technology of mountain railroading to be able to descend and climb the steep access shaft. (The main tunnel itself will, of course, have a much gentler slope and be able to carry trains at mainline speeds.)
The vast stockpiles of materials, continuously replenished via special sidings on the standard-gauge British Rail (BR) mainline, give more indication of the scope of the venture. And, this is only one of two British construction sites, with the French also tunneling toward a meeting beneath the Channel waters from their end. The "Chunnel," as it has become known in the British press, will take six years of concerted work despite using the best available technology.
It will stretch 31 miles, with about two thirds of that distance being beneath the channel. There will actually be three main bores. The two outside ones, 24 feet in diameter, will carry rail traffic. A service tunnel, 15 feet in diameter, will run between the main bores, connected to them by right angle shafts every 1,230 feet.
At present, the fastest rail-hovercraft-rail link between London and Paris takes 5 hours and 15 minutes; the Chunnel will cut two hours from that transit time. (Treaties setting up the project provide that customs clearance for passenger trains will take place in transit.)
Brussels and London will become even closer in time, with the route through the Chunnel putting these cities less than three hours from each other. The London-Brussels route, currently served by a hydrofoil on the fastest Channel-crossing schedule, now takes 4 hours and 55 minutes.
Private passenger cars will also be carried, but only aboard specially equipped trains, initially shuttling between terminals just outside the tunnel ends at Folkstone on the British side and Frethun, near Calais, in northwestern France.
Waterloo Station in London will become the main passenger terminal on the new direct route to the continent; major improvements are planned on the line to Dover to permit 100 mph runs between Tonbridge and the Chunnel. Similar upgrading will also take place for a parallel freight route, primarily to increase clearances.
But when the Channel Tunnel opens, all that traffic will be gliding beneath Dover. The fate of the present port with its rail and passenger ferry operations isn't yet clear, nor do we know yet what will happen to the local traffic patterns into Dover.
For now, however, on a typical day a visitor to London can still select among more than 30 trains if he or she wants to journey to Dover. Most of the departures are from Waterloo and Victoria stations.
At present, the rails of BR's Network Southeast are still secondary lines. You won't find any IC125 high speed trains here as you do on the main lines north from London.
The rolling stock is older, slower, and a bit more rattly. The fastest trains cover the 79 miles from London to Dover in 1 hour and 26 minutes. An "all stops" (local) takes a little over two hours but gives you more time to view the countryside. It also provides the possibility of a stop-over in Canterbury for a look at its medieval past, including the cathedral that you'll glimpse from a passing train.
Leave London early in the morning, and you can walk a couple of miles along the clifftops before noon, tread the historic streets of Canterbury a few hours later, and still be back in London for dinner and an evening show. The big city has its own attractions, but for me there was nothing that compared with that walk along the cliffs, where on that blustery day, I met only two other lone wanderers during a span of several hours.
Because most trains to Dover terminate at the Priory station, you'll need to take a bus from there into town -- unless, as I did, you elect to head straight out to Shakespeare Cliff by taxi. From the center of town, when facing the Channel, turn right, staying to the waterfront. Soon you'll come to a small cottage where a hand-lettered wooden sign hangs on the picket fence.
It reads: "In 1940-41 this piece of land was a dug-out machine gun post with two guns covering the beach south and east. A searchlight post was over in the corner at the first turning of the beach steps."
Pointing out that a German shell fragment is on display in the window, it adds the quotation, "'Ye that live on midst English pastures green, remember us and think what might have been.'" At the bottom, there's a postscript: "Will anybody who served here re-visiting the place please knock. Tea is brewing for you."
In its few lines, the simple sign says far more than any great monument could.
After pausing there, turn left off the sidewalk and begin on the path that will take you along the cliffs.
Regardless of what fate holds in store, the cliffs will still be there. The wind will still whip through the tall grass along their tops. And the history will still be there, too, so impossible to ignore.
Perhaps Dover will come back as a travel destination in its own right, rather than just a stopover point to change modes of transportation. On the train back to London, you rather hope so.
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