Seven Sisters...who needs Dover??

One of the things always in the back of my mind when I imagined coming to England was seeing the white cliffs of Dover.  However, I'd heard how unimpressive they can be and how unimpressive Dover itself is.  Well, it was still on my list...until I heard about the Seven Sisters Country Park in Sussex.  Seven Sisters has been a long time favorite by my hosts, David and Karen, and an area they especially love to take visitors to.

This little area of Sussex is only about 40 miles away from France, making it an ideal geographic area for the Germans to aim for when they were planning on invading (or so the English reasoned anyways).  The English built bunkers, dug trenches/dikes/I don't know what to call it, and built these small concrete barriers to prevent tanks from advancing.  Apparently during the war, the locals spent the evenings lighting up the beach at night and built a faux airstrip visible during the day to trick the Germans into thinking this was actually an area farther north (Leicester, I believe...btw, it's pronounced "Lester".  I kid you not).  I say apparently because I read that in a Wikipedia article...so who knows if it's true!  However, all the things built into the beach from WWII are still there today.  Some of the bunkers had lots of beer bottles and trash in them...this one wasn't too bad:

This is about a football field length away from the beach.

Pretty cozy in there, I'd say.

I was told those ditches at the bottom center of the picture were to prevent tanks from advancing, as are the concrete structures on the pic below. 

But we didn't come to just take in some history!  Like I said, who needs the white cliffs of Dover when you have the Seven Sisters???

These wild ponies are here to eat the tufts of grass the sheep leave behind.  They are gorgeous!  

Anyways, it was a beautiful weekend with perfect weather, if a bit chilly.  Things have been getting down to the negatives over night (as the weatherwoman here says, the minimum of -2.5C and a maximum of 5-7...so proper) and it was pretty windy at the tops of the cliffs, but beautiful blue skies and low tide?  Perfect!