Cheltham and Rochester, England

The Royal Dockyards back in the day.

View of the Ocelot from the stern.

In the sub.

The memorial to the ships and 11000 sailors lost during the war.

HMS Gannet.

Admiral Nelson's Victory.

Bruce and Pam.

The lovely streets of Rochester.

Rochester Cathedral.

The city wall of Rochester Castle.

The castle keep.

Very old England.

The cathedral seen from inside the castle wall.

Bruce straightening out a building.

Eating some horrible Pork Scratchings.

Pam and I enjoying a drink.

Saturday, May 24th.

After breakfast we drove to the town of Rochester where Bruce and Pam had booked a Holiday Inn for the night and where we left the car. We took a local bus to Chatham to visit the historic Royal Navy Dockyards. The site is massive. We boarded three ships to explore: the Ocelot submarine, the HMS Cavalier, a destroyer built during the second world war, and the HMS Gannet, a masted sailing ship. This is the dockyard where Admiral Nelson’s Victory was built. That’s the ship that he was on when he defeated a combined force of French and Spanish ships at Trafalgar during the Napoleonic Wars, giving Britain command and dominance of the high seas for decades to come. He died during that battle. Three submarines were built here for Canada in the 1960’s including the Okanagan. We also watched a very funny young woman in pirate gear teach us about pirate life. It was aimed at kids but she was excellent and very entertaining. Then we took a bus to Rochester where we walked the quaint typical streets of the city. Charles Dickens lived in the area and referred to the city in his books. At the end of the street by the Medway River was the huge Rochester Castle and the Rochester Cathedral Castle. We were too late to enter either but they were impressive. Then we found a nice local pub and had a couple of pints before going to the Fish restaurant where I treated them to a great meal. We went to one more pub for a nightcap and then took an Uber to the hotel.