Sunday Times Where Was I? Holiday Competition

Not too difficult this week. Near as I can figure it, the most likely answers seem to me to be:

Q1. Dover

Q2. Charles Rolls


(N.B For question 2, it is quite easy to select Sir Christopher Cockerell, pioneer of the hovercraft as the first pioneer, as he made his famous flight almost 50 years to the day that Bleriot made his but since I could not find a significant event which occurred in Dover on 2nd June 1960, concluded that the first pioneer was Bleriot and this indicates that Charles Rolls was the second pioneer, as he performed the first double crossing of the English channel in a powered aircraft, on the 2nd June 1910).


The initial clues place us in the town of Dover, on the Prince of Wales pier (1650 feet and completed 1902). The pier, in some of the photographs I saw of it, did have concrete panels with round windows in them at the landward end, to allow sightseers to view the activities in the hoverport below. A truly great British genius, Sir Christopher Cockerell (gawrd bless 'im leddies ed jittlemen) carried out the first pioneering hovercraft flight from Calais to Dover on the 25th July 1959 and there were passenger hovercraft operating there up until the year 2000.

The 4140 feet breakwater the author is referring to, is most likely Admiralty pier. According to some of the references I looked at, a guy called Matthew Web (b1848) set off from here to become the first person to successfully swim across the English channel without a buoyancy aid, on the 25th August 1875. Admiralty pier was fed with passengers, by a railway station called Dover Marine, which did indeed have a 700ft shed and was used by a luxury pullman train service, called the Golden Arrow which operated from London and Paris and left both cities at 11:00. Presumably, they were supposed to arrive in their respective destinations at 17:35. There was also a Dover promenade pier (900ft and demolished in 1927 from the sources I checked).

Looking about a mile north of the end of the Prince of Wales pier, means that the lighthouse must be on land and there appears to be a roman Pharos around 80 feet high in, the vicinity of Dover castle. The memorial commemorating the historic flight of Louis Bleriot is in the vicinity of the castle too. A brave pioneering aviator called Charles Rolls doubled Bleriot's flight, when he crossed the channel twice, the following year on the 2nd June 1910.

Link to Sunday Times Where Was I? Competition