In My Rover Near the Cliffs of Dover- A Love Story
She was brilliant. She was beautiful. She was my most faithful of companions and her name was Rover. Now as I peered out through the fogged-up glass, it seemed I was losing her for good. I remember that fateful day I first brought her home with me. Everything about her seemed so pure, clean and new. I loved the way she looked… the way she smelled… that certain style that only she possessed.
They say you can’t buy love, but the 500 quid I paid for her never felt so right, nor so good. At first, I planned on only using her for awhile. You know, merely as a cheap means to get around. But then things got much more serious. I became attached and I didn’t want to lose her. I seriously considered even bringing her back to the States with me; and I probably would’ve if everything hadn’t just sort of fallen apart.
She had been mine for only a month when I first began noticing her condition starting to deteriorate. It all happened as we were returning from a romantic drive from the White Cliffs of Dover. to my home in Godmanchester, Cambridgeshire. First it was merely a hiccup or sputter and but nothing to really warrant too much concern.
White Cliffs of Dover
When she started getting worse I took her to get checked out. Surprisingly they said she was still in good condition for her age. Her prognosis was really quite favorable and they expected her to last several more years. Oh, they couldn’t have been more wrong! It wasn’t but two weeks later that she really took a turn for the worse. She began overheating, discharging milky fluids, and then…
KAPOW!… I was just about out the gate of RAF Molesworth when her head gasket blew! Billows of white smoke poured from her exhaust as black smoke rose from her hood. My poor Rover 45 had just ran her last course and now she was through! Distant sirens began to wail as the base fire trucks began racing my way. I called a tow truck after the fire department cleared, and she was shortly laid to rest at a scrapyard just outside the gate. The man running the place gave me 50 quid for her spare parts; although I felt she was worth much more than that to me.
My Rover 45 in better days.
On the taxi ride home I began to reflect on much happier times. I remembered how each morning I would open up the door and sit inside the driver’s seat; only to remember that I was in England and that I was actually now seated in the passenger’s side. I would then pretend to be looking for something inside her glove box before cleverly exiting the vehicle and switching to the opposite seat.
The Tower Bridge over the River Thames
Oh, we had some wonderful times together, my Rover 45 and me! We toured London, Wells, Bath, and even sunny Southend-on-Sea. Once I took a ferry from the White Cliffs of Dover, crossed the English Channel, with just me and my trusty Rover. We followed the sparkling coastline all the way to Normandy, France. It was on these embattled beaches, that the greatest generation made their advance. Now my Rover is no more like history gone by, I shouldn’t have wrote this poem, it’s starting to make me… cry.
Normandy Beaches, France
Big John at Playmobil store in Cambridge, England
The Tower of London, a historical castle in London England
The famous walled city of York, England
It’s been a few years now since I left those White Cliffs of Dover and it seems like a lifetime since I last saw my poor Rover 45. Now, as she sits rusting away in an English scrapyard, I think of our memories together and wish I could relive just one of those days.
Thank you for reading my very tragic love story, In my Rover Near the Cliffs of Dover. When you’ve wiped away your tears and blown away those sniffles, please add a comment or explore more dreary posts on Big John’s Adventures in Travel.
Happy travels,
Big John
Posted in Adventurous Places, Europe and tagged cliffs of dover, England, Rover 45 by Big John with 1 comment.