The great thing about piers from a photographic perspective is that the straight lines lend themselves so well to compositions. I always try to make a point of directing any diagonal lines into the corner of shots if I can.

The main appeal to us in picking Herne Bay for an early pitstop was to check out its pier as we’re rather fond of piers when we’re out and about. Until 1978 the pier at Herne Bay had been the second-longest in the United Kingdom but a storm destroyed the central section leaving part of it isolated at sea and no repairs were ever made. What’s left isn’t much but it was nice to see it anyway on our fleeting trip to the town and I took a handful of photos of and from the shoreline area. We also discovered that Herne Bay had the world’s first purpose-built, freestanding clock tower so our short trip to the small town uncovered quite a bit of interesting history.

With this publishing of the animals we saw at the zoo taking place almost six years after our visit there’s not going to be a lot of descriptive text accompanying the pictures because my memory isn’t a photographic one. We can’t really remember anything specifically that we got up to at Wingham Wildlife Park but chances are good that we simply walked the main route and snapped away at any of the exhibited creatures that deigned to stay still long enough. What can you say about a zoo that you don’t know already? There are animals there and you either accept that for many it’s an important piece of conservation work or you worry that there’s exploitation taking place. If we were in the latter camp then we wouldn’t visit. We think that zoos generally do a good job these days, in this country at least, and I can’t recall seeing any obviously stressed creatures behind glass or in cages.

So, onto Wingham Wildlife Park’s animals then and I’ll roughly group them according to type rather than by how you might encounter them if you visit.

Snakes

Let’s start with the animals that scare the crap out of my mother-in-law (not that I’d want to). Snakes are creatures where I find that the smaller they are the prettier they tend to be. The brighter colours and more impressive patterning on the scales seem to be found amongst the small snakes while the larger ones forget all that and just rely on their musculature to make you say “Ooh!”

Other Reptiles

One of my wife’s favourite animals is a specific type of reptile. If we ever visit a zoo and see a tortoise and my wife doesn’t remark that she wants to steal one and keep it then I’ll know she’s been taken over by aliens.

As for me, I’ve got a fondness for lizards in the reptile class. They always seem to have the best names: Gila Monster, Bearded Dragon, Geoff the slow-worm, etc. There’s something deliciously prehistoric about a lizard that appeals to the young boy in me who used to know all the names of dinosaurs and who watched plenty of Doug McClure films growing up.

Birds

From dinosaurs to their descendants next, and that means the birds of Wingham Wildlife Park.

Is there anything more terrifying than hornbills?

Many years after seeing pelicans in captivity we would see them flying freely in Mexico (see: Highlights of Puerto Vallarta).

There’s something about birds in general we don’t like anywhere near as much as we do other animals and I can’t say exactly what that is. It’s not as if reptiles are warmer and more affectionate than birds; it’s not as if birds don’t display a great variety of shapes, sizes, and colours; it’s not as if we’re not constantly impressed by just how deliciously smart corvids are; we just don’t generally like them that much. My wife really, really doesn’t like parrots or any close relation of them.

One bird group that slips through into my wife’s affections, though, is that of the penguins. We could have spent ages with the Humboldt’s Penguins at the Kent zoo although after a while the smell does get to you. We’re pleased to say that penguins are other animals we’ve seen both in the zoo and in the wild although our visit to Argentina in 2016 featured Magellanic Penguins instead.

Big Cats

Some people are cat people and some people are dog people. I’m not going to get into all that dogs are stupid and cats are smart debate because the only people disagreeing with that are dog people who are also stupid so what’s the point? We are cat people and we love big cats because they are for the most part simply scaled-up small cats. You know that if you’re in a cave trapped by a tiger (I don’t care if tigers don’t live in caves) you can always distract it with a bit of string or a laser pointer or by placing a pencil or a straw on the edge of a table. Yes, it’s a cave with a table in it. With dogs you never can tell if it’s going to be one that drools over you or one that just won’t stop barking and running around at a thousand miles per hour which puts your very life in peril if you were ever to come face-to-face with a wolf.

Wingham’s big cats included the usual suspects – pumas, jaguars, cheetahs, lions, non-cave-dwelling tigers – but it was nice to spot a caracel too because ears like that need to be seen.

Primates

A brief reminder of evolution history for those of you at the back: sometime between 85 and 55 million years ago the primate order of mammals evolved. The prosimian primates evolved first, these including descendants of the lemur, loris, tarsiers, etc. Anthropoids started evolving from this group around 45 million years ago, anthropoids eventually including the families of animals such as monkeys, apes, and, of course, humans. Prior to anthropoidal development the prosimians were a very prevalent group on the planet but the anthropoids changed that behaviour, effectively dominating the daytime activity while the prosimians became more nocturnal. So if you’ve ever thought of yourself as more of a nighttime person then it’s entirely possible you’re prosimian.

All of this is just a lead-up to saying that Wingham Wildlife Park had examples of both lemurs (prosimian primates)…

…and monkeys (anthropoid primates). The macaques were another animal that we got to see in their natural environment years later when we visited the Rock of Gibraltar.

Other Mammals

And finally, all the other mammals I saw fit to photograph at the zoo. I was very pleased to see bats as we’ve visited places allegedly holding them before and just had to take their word for it.

And this shed houses bats.

Does it? Where?

They’re in there. They like the dark.

Oh. Kay. What about the next shed?

Pterodactyls!

Who apparently also like the dark.

Oh yes, the more impossibly dark the better.

Well, this has been a fun visit.

I’ve saved until last the animal that has forever been known as my nemesis ever since I tried to take a photo of one at Marwell Zoo and it moved a split second before every single shot much to my wife’s intense joy: the red panda. She was devastated that this one in Wingham allowed me to capture some pictures without swearing.

Ightham Mote is a moated manor house with origins dating back to the middle of the fourteenth century. What makes it interesting from an architectural perspective is that it remains mostly unchanged from its original design and so more accurately reflects buildings of medieval age, many of which had additions or removals to alter aspects as they passed through successive owners down the centuries. Ightham Mote is a courtyard manor house with most of its features looking inwards to the interior space and very little viewing out or indicating functionality from outside. Surrounding the square building is a square moat over which three bridges cross. The majority of the house’s seventy-or-so rooms are on its eastern side. A garden and lawn area lie to the building’s west.

After a quick look around outside the walls of Ightham Mote we ventured over the bridge into the quadrangle. This was a lovely area; a sun trap still offering opportunities for shade, well-kept bushes and trees to bring a little bit of nature inside, protected from the wind, and shielded from the distractions – and probably dangers, given its age – of the outside world. It would have been a lovely place in which to live.

There was an opportunity to climb the steps to the tower over the arched entrance in one of the house’s walls and we’re not ones to pass up the opportunity to take a chance on a heart attack ending our travelling days. Our tour of Ightham Mote commenced with us heading up for some spectacular views over the grounds and some of the nearby Kent countryside from the battlements.

We then took a wander through the open rooms on the two floors of the property.

Houses like Ightham Mote tend to be inherited within generations of a family and that’s the case with this one too. After a number of owners in its first century and a half it was bought by Sir William Selby (see: Selby Family) in 1591 and there it remained until the late nineteenth century. From then it became a bit of a haunt for Americans.

In the 1880s it was rented out to the family of William Jackson Palmer, a distinguished and thoroughly interesting veteran of the American Civil War, and prominent civil engineer. His daughter was painted in the manor house by the artist John Singer Sargent and the writer Henry James was a visitor. In 1951, following years of neglect in the wake of mounting costs for its upkeep, the decision was made to sell the property and its contents at auction with a view to demolishing the building or transforming it into apartments. Three local men purchased Ightham Mote in order to secure its future and eventually sold it to an American who had been stationed near it during the Second World War. It was he who was able to effect repairs to the historic building and who began to decorate and furnish it with pieces from the seventeenth century and beyond, and in 1965 he announced that on his death it would all pass into the stewardship of the National Trust which it duly did in 1985.

After being completely charmed with the interior of Ightham Mote we left to continue our voyage home but not before making one complete circuit around the house’s moat to enjoy its medieval architecture and idyllic setting one more time.

Dover Castle is managed by English Heritage, which we’re not members of, and which the staff quickly went out of their way to attempt to remedy once we reached the ticket office.

Two adults, please.

Are you English Heritage members?

No.

Would you like to join? You’ll be able to save on the price of today’s admission.

No, thank you.

It’s really worth you joining.

We don’t visit enough of your properties to make it worthwhile, but thanks.

Where are you from?

Portsmouth.

We have plenty of properties near there that you could visit for free if you were a member.

Yes, we know, and we’ve likely seen them all at some point. We’ll just pay for the admission tickets today.

Have you seen how much you can save by becoming a member?

Yes, we’ve had some of the top mathematical brains from continental Europe fly over just ahead of this trip and boffins from research labs across the country crunching the numbers throughout the night and we’ve determined it’s more cost-effective for us to just pay on the door today which is what we’re trying to do.

Okay. Well, if you change your mind then come and see me later and I can sign you up. Here are your tickets. Please show them when you get through the door over there.

They really, really wanted us to become members. As forewarned, we had to show our tickets to another person.

Thank you. Oh, aren’t you members?

No.

Did my colleague ask if you wanted to sign up for membership?

Yes, thank you. We decided it wasn’t financially sensible for us to do so today. Is it just down here that we go?

Wait a second. Let me see if I can find details of membership benefits.

Please don’t do that.

It won’t take a moment. If you sign up today you’ll be able to save the cost of entry.

We know that. I’m begging you to just let us through.

I’m really surprised you didn’t sign up for membership. I can take you through the process now if you like. What are you doing!?

We rendered the castle staff member unconscious and hid the body where we hoped it would lay undisturbed for a few hours then proceeded to take a look around. We quickly discovered that some areas weren’t open and others required booking a tour that we didn’t want to hang around for so we prioritised anything that involved getting out of the rain. We were soon wandering through the medieval tunnels that had been dug out during the First Barons’ War (1215-1217) when the castle had come under siege; the tunnels allowed the defending English soldiers to counter-attack the besieging French from behind.

Although there had been some form of defensive fortifications on the site since at least the second century during the Roman occupation of Britain – with archaeological evidence that some other kind of building occupied the spot going back as far as the Iron Age too – it wasn’t until the reign of King Henry II that Dover Castle started to grow into the structure that survives to this day. The inner and outer baileys built from around 1179 onwards as concentric defensive rings around the central keep were likely the first to have that design in Europe. Additional defensive improvements were made during Henry VIII‘s reign and significant changes to add bastions for gun emplacements took place on the cusp of the nineteenth century during the Napoleonic Wars.

Dover Castle is home to the Princess of Wales’ Royal Regiment and The Queen’s Regiment museum which might well be the museum with the longest name in the world. Not exactly the sort of thing that trips off the tongue.

While we’re fond of museums in general we’re not terribly military-minded, and histories of regiments aren’t the sort of draw for us that they may be for others. You might like it a lot but we found this to be little more than of passing interest, but it was inside where the wind and rain couldn’t get us so that was a bonus.

Of more interest to us was Henry II’s Great Tower, or the Keep. The rectangular design of the keep belongs to the fabulously-named Maurice the Engineer (or Mason), and Dover Castle’s keep would be one of the last to inherit this shape. Maurice had previously worked on the castle at Newcastle. The Great Tower is one of the largest castle keeps in the country and was built from Kent ragstone covered by Ashlar stone from Caen.

The main point of visiting the Great Tower was to climb to the top and brave the elements for views over the countryside and nearby town but there were a number of rooms to duck into on the way up – a handy excuse to take a rest if for some reason you’re not particularly fit but still find yourself compelled to take on physical activity practically beyond your capability at every chance like a certain couple of people I could mention – and we got to see glimpses of how the keep would have functioned during the medieval period.

To the roof of the keep then, and a chance to get a good feel for the challenge that would be faced by any attacking army in getting up the land and breaching the perimeter walls.

The views over parts of the Kent coastline and landscape and down into Dover were very good, and on a warm, bright day it would have been lovely to spend more time out there, but the wind was fierce and even though the rain was only drizzling now it was all still enough to encourage us to keep the visit brief. Brief for me is a relative term and my wife is fully aware that it means “Just one more shot from here, and then I haven’t taken a photo looking in that direction from on those steps, and then I might just need one more circuit in case I’ve missed something.”

Despite the high pressure sales tactics of the English Heritage staff on the day we’d like to return to Dover Castle at some point because there was a lot we didn’t get to see, especially everything connected with the first and second world wars. As mentioned before, this was due to a combination of some areas not being open on the day of our visit and some requiring timed entry that we didn’t feel was worth the wait then.

We finished our look around by heading across to St Mary in Castro, a church in the grounds of Dover Castle comprising of a main building dating back to the Saxon period (albeit significantly restored at various later periods in history) and a tower that was formerly a Roman lighthouse likely constructed in the second century C.E. This is one of only three lighthouses from the Roman era still surviving in the world, is the tallest still-standing Roman structure in the country, and has a claim to being the oldest standing building in the country too. That last one sounds a bit like those “oldest pub in England” claims that you can find somewhere in nearly every city, but it might actually be true.

We next drove the short distance down into Dover, not because we had any illusions that there would be much to see there – it’s a mainly commercial port town so if diesel fumes and the sight and sound of trucks is your thing, ya weirdo, then you might be thrilled by it all – but because we fancied a bite to eat and something to drink.

Dover was not a particularly attractive place, although the strong winds that had been with us had by now blown away most of the cloud cover and brightened it all up substantially. My love of brutalism means I do like to see lots of concrete and modern, sometimes highly utilitarian styles of architecture from the post-war period, but even here there wasn’t much to excite me. We naturally made our way down to the beach because we do like to be beside the seaside, and the views from the town up to the castle on the hill helped to give those fortifications a grander sense of imposing scale, but ultimately we stayed only long enough to eat, drink, and use the toilets before heading off.

The image that springs into the mind of most people who think about Dover is that of its famous White Cliffs, the chalk faces that stretch for thirteen kilometres and face towards France as historical symbols of defence and modern symbols of xenophobic insularism.

A short drive from the town set us down at the car park at the start of the walk we wanted to take just really to have said that we’ve done it. The initial view down to the commercial port really highlighted just what a blight it all was when compared to the historical monument we’d explored earlier in the day and the natural wonder we were about to stretch our legs along. Dover as a whole felt like a horrible mash of unconnected parts, possibly a result of constant threat and actual attacks due to its proximity to the continent, and possibly partly due to its exploitation for commercial means due to its proximity to the continent too. I’m not sure if I’m truly conveying how mostly unimpressed I was by it.

The walk along the White Cliffs of Dover was lovely. It was possible to get very close to the edge at times and the dipping, snaking route along the coastline of the English Channel provided some lovely views of the chalk cliffs and long drops in places. I’m not sure we would have enjoyed it quite as much if the rain from earlier in the day had still been present, but it wouldn’t have stopped us experiencing it and you really can’t visit this part of the country without doing this.

If you’re wondering whether it’s possible for you to see France from the cliffs at Dover then I can confirm that this is indeed the case. I can also confirm that if the weather conditions are right, as they were when we took this walk, it’s also possible for your phone to connect to a French provider because it has a stronger signal. We were quite surprised to get a message telling us we were on Vodafone France at one point and while this was fine for us because of there being no roaming charges to worry about it might be something you need to be aware of depending on how your phone contract works and whether things change in the future in the wake of Britain’s moronic face-plant out of the EU.

We had no intention of walking the entire length of the white cliffs – what the hell do you take us for? – but we did have a destination in mind; that being the South Foreland Lighthouse.

You can only reach the lighthouse on foot by walking from Dover or via a bicycle route, and the building, owned and managed by the National Trust (of which we are members) is well worth the visit. South Foreland was the first lighthouse to use electricity and it was where Marconi conducted a number of radio transmission experiments.

There are actually two lighthouses but the reasons for both being built is not truly understood since the answer typically given – that sailors would line both lights up in order to know when it was safe to turn past the Goodwin Sands – doesn’t ring true due to the shifting nature of the sandbanks which was known about long before the beacons’ construction in the nineteenth century. But never rule out it being the result of that most popular of Victorian pastimes, though:

Percy, listen to this idea! Not one, but two lighthouses at Dover!

Two!? Come now, James. We’re contracted for just the one.

But what if one falls off the cliff?

That’s… Well… I suppose it would be safer with two. Do they often fall off cliffs?

It’s very windy. I almost fell off a cliff once.

That’s settled, then. Two it is.

You know, three is better than two.

I think you’ve had enough opium for one day, James.

Exploring the relatively remote South Foreland Lighthouse during a reasonably quiet period of the year meant that there was hardly anyone else around which had the benefit of meaning that when we got to see the clockwork mechanism which turns the optics of the building my wife was told by the guide that she was allowed to turn the crank and set it all in motion. She is fond of pressing buttons and pulling levers if allowed to and she didn’t hesitate to play with the machinery.

Another good reason for visiting the lighthouse along the cliff walk was for the tea room that was attached to the property. Even though we’d not long eaten and had a drink in Dover we do try to spend a little extra whenever we’re visiting historic properties and this gave us a good excuse to have another sit down. The tea and cake we had were fantastic.

After we’d rested we made our way back along the cliffs to the car. This early in the year the sun was dipping towards the horizon already and we were walking directly towards it so there were fewer photographs on this return trek, with a rotating radar dish being the only thing that caught my attention.

So, my conclusion for our day trip to Dover is that I’d like to return one day to see more of the castle and ideally with better weather conditions. I’d also like not to have to incapacitate staff members for persistent upselling attempts. No means no.

If we were to return then I’d definitely head for another walk along the cliffs because that was nice, the views were lovely, and we need every opportunity to get out into the fresh air and move our legs since we probably don’t do anywhere near enough of that. As for the town of Dover, though, we’d likely give that a miss. It wasn’t unpleasant and oppressive in the same way that Barnsley and Blackpool are, but there was also nothing that suggested it was worthy of a return trip, and in a post-Brexit world it feels like it’s a place that will become more congested, noisier, more industrialised, and less welcoming over time.

For us, there’s no better type of short break (not a staycation; don’t get me started on that; I will hurt you) than one based by the coastline. Of course, as anyone who knows us will know, I’m not including one place in this generalisation – I won’t mention its name but it does rhyme with Cackpool – but a great example of a place in England we’ve liked enough to visit on more than one occasion is Margate in Kent, and in this post I’m going to take a walk from Cliftonville, east of Margate, to the main town along the seafront, highlighting interesting sights along the way. Interesting to me, anyway.

In 2015 we stayed in Margate for the second year in a row, and as with the previous year we booked into the Walpole Bay Hotel. This is located in Cliftonville, less than two kilometres’ walk from the beach but set on cliffs on the northern coastline so making for a great and not-too-long walk to and from town. It’s a lovely distance, in fact, for clearing the cobwebs in the mind at the start and end of a look around the town. Walpole Bay Hotel is not just a hotel, but a living museum, and we adored it so much on our first visit that we had to stay again. It’s hard to describe it, but if we head back to Margate at any point then it will be where we book again. The first two photos here show the view from our hotel room, looking northwards over the sea and westwards in the direction of Margate.

As you can probably tell, we arrived at our hotel in the early evening, with the sun dropping towards the horizon. We wasted little time, wanting to get out and down into town in search of a pub or two in which to enjoy our first night in Kent on this break. From the hotel we headed straight to the cliff where steps led down to a promenade that snaked along the seafront.

If you’re a fan of tidal pools – somebody’s got to be – then you’re going to be spoilt for choice in Margate as there are two large ones to choose from. One, on the main beach, can be seen further down this post, but there’s another one directly off-shore from the Walpole Bay Hotel called, naturally enough, the Walpole Bay Tidal Pool. Both pools are artificial constructs, trapping seawater that floods in at high tide from flowing back out when the water recedes, but only the one here at Walpole Bay is Grade II-listed (on account of its scale and engineering techniques used) and recommended for swimmers.

In the first part of this look along Margate seafront I’ll skip over the prettiest sight along the lower promenade, that of the Art Deco lift on the cliff edge, and continue on towards the main town, but there’s more on it later in this post. For now you can simply admire the architectural styling.

There’s no getting away from the fact that the landward view along the promenade walk is not going to win any beauty prizes. Even the addition of some street art didn’t do a lot to improve matters but we did enjoy coming across the Flying Toast imagery from Artista which almost seemed to serve as waymarkers along the route.

The next spot of interest along the coastline walk was the site of the Cliftonville Lido, identified by the Lido Sands mosaic tiling reflecting when the outdoor pool area of the complex was filled with sand in the 1970s (more grass than sand when we visited, though). This area would have been fantastic in its heyday (1920s-1930s, but some of the lido elements date from around a hundred year earlier (more on that a little later)), with underground tunnels for baths, bathing machines wheeled down to the sea (four-wheeled, covered, with umbrellas that lowered towards the water to protect the modesty of women entering and exiting the sea), and an amphitheatre complex. On the cliffs nearby was a sloping section in which a short funicular railway would have brought people up and down.

Our walk on this first night in Margate brought us to the harbour and its curving, stone pier, the Harbour Arm. We enjoyed the setting sun and views out across the water before making our way to some pubs for food and drink.

A word here about the pubs we visited on this evening. First up was The Lifeboat, a place we’d hit the year before in Margate and definitely our sort of pub; tiny with loads of real ales and ciders. Highly recommended. We had some pie and mash there and a few drinks before heading off for something else, and that brought us to The Northern Belle. Things that happened there:

• One guy recommended the Turner Contemporary Art Gallery to us once he realised we were from out-of-town because it was hosting a Grayson Perry exhibit. We’d passed the gallery before hitting the harbour but hadn’t checked out what was happening there as it had been closed. We would take his advice the next day.
• A tramp came into the pub and was given a free drink by the barman who then explained to us and another couple of tourists after he’d left that the guy had used to be quite successful before suffering a nervous breakdown and becoming homeless.
• Two guys in the pub started talking about their pasts as bank robbers. They’d served time, and among some anecdotes one of them mentioned that he’d encouraged his wing in prison – including the officers – to watch The Last Night of the Proms and sing along to Jerusalem.
• A posh, older woman came in, sat at the bar, and started talking about the UKIP rally she’d attended and how wonderful leaving the EU would be. Bank robber Steve took an undisguised dislike to her, referred to her as “Mrs Bucket”, and went up in our estimation.
• When Steve discovered we were from Portsmouth he started talking about his youth as a football hooligan with Spurs’ Yid Army. He told us the toughest fight he’d had was with Cardiff but that Portsmouth’s 6:57 Crew were a close second. He was also proud that he’d been seen on Match of the Day getting punched by Pat Jennings.

On our first visit to Margate in 2014 we’d used the town as a base for exploring Kent during the day and only really seen the town at night. For this visit, however, we wanted to see what we could find to entertain us on a full day there so the second day saw us repeat much of the previous evening’s walk ahead of a look for something to do. We tend to travel outside typical tourism seasons so we knew that not everything would be open; as a result we didn’t have any firm plans for things to do in Margate but we figured we’d find enough to occupy us.

After breakfast in the Walpole Bay Hotel we made our to the cliff top for a look out across the sea and along the seafront.

Before heading west towards Margate as we had done the night before we decided to see what an eastward walk would uncover. This very quickly brought us to Palm Bay, a decent option for a sandy beach likely to be considerably quieter than the Main Sands of the town but with very little else there other than a café. Also, while it was clearly a bay and worthy of the name there were no palms that we could see. That’s false advertising, that is.

We headed back along the lower promenade and past the Walpole Bay tidal pool.

The Cliff Lift is a Grade II-Listed Building on account of its rarity, intactness, and architectural interest. The overriding style of the 1934-built structure is Art Deco, of course, but there are Egyptian influences in the tapering design, too. This was one of two mechanical means to ascend and descend the cliffs along the coast, with the other being the funicular nearer to the lido.

The cliffs are chalk, which you’ll probably already know is a form of limestone and pretty soft on the rock spectrum. If Bryan Adams was a mineral then he’d be chalk. Being soft and white and easy in which to make carvings and use the residue to leave markings there were lots of examples of exactly that having been done over the years. I’m referring to the cliffs here but it probably equally applies to Bryan Adams, to be fair.

It didn’t take us long to reach the Harbour Arm again. This curving, stone pier was constructed between 1812 and 1815. The lighthouse that marks its end point is a later reconstruction of the original, this one being erected in 1955. There were some small establishments along its length – cafés, a bar, some galleries – but we didn’t stop to see any of them.

In addition to the lighthouse at the end of the pier, there was a sculpture that wouldn’t look out of place as some kind of adversary for Doctor Who to face off against. This shell lady is Mrs Booth and was made by Ann Carrington (read more about the sculpture and the other shell ladies here: Ann Carrington – Mrs Booth). Mrs Booth is made from bronze, and like other sculptures in this series was named after a famous resident of the area. The real Mrs Booth, Sophia Caroline, was a landlady with whom J.M.W. Turner lived in his later life as “Mr Booth”.

The location of the Margate property in which Turner and Mrs Booth stayed is now the Turner Contemporary Art Gallery and it was there that we next visited, following the advice of one of the previous evening’s pub patrons; that was our first experience of seeing some of Grayson Perry’s pottery and tapestry pieces up close and was a fabulous experience. Look at us, embracing all the arty stuff!

After our intake of modern art we passed by something considerably older on our way to something rather bizarre.

The older thing was the Tudor House. Considered to be one of the oldest of its kind in Kent, this former yeoman farmer’s house was built in 1525 and is timber-framed, two storeys high, and sat on a foundation of a flint plinth. It was clearly a house for someone of high status, sporting two chimneys and glazed windows. The house – which by the late nineteenth century had been split into three cottages and was in a general state of decline – was scheduled for demolition in the 1930s as part of a local scheme to clear the slum areas of Margate. Luckily, a builder recognised some of the historic features in the building and it was saved from destruction, instead undergoing renovation work using traditional Tudor methods and materials to restore it to its state today.

The Tudor House is Grade I-listed and looked gorgeous from the outside, but it didn’t appear to be open to visitors on the day we passed by.

We next took a look at the bizarre thing, and it was something we’d remembered seeing the signs for on the year before’s trip to Margate, but which, with us only really seeing the town in the evenings, we’d not had a chance to explore. This was the Shell Grotto, a quite enchanting, underground set of tunnels with practically every surface covered with mosaic patterns formed from shells. How many shells? Oh, over four and a half million shells. Whilst the majority of the different types of shells used can be found locally, especially along the bays we’d walked by, the flat winkle shells which make up the largest surface area cannot. It is speculated that they came from Southampton, but that’s not the end of the speculation.

That the grotto was discovered in 1835 is not disputed, but the purpose of the grotto and its age, which would point to the builders, is. Hypotheses have included:

• A Phoenician trading post, since the design bears some similarities to others found in Europe.
• A mystical place connected to the Knights Templar.
• A mystical place connected to Freemasons.
• A mystical place connected to Mithras.
• An astronomical temple to the sun.
• A rich man’s folly.

Gas lighting initially installed ended up coating the shells with carbon deposits that make dating the place nearly impossible, and the designs of the various motifs is unique, not really pointing to any specific culture. To us, though, when walking around and being genuinely impressed with the effort and artistry involved, the lattermost suggestion of the Shell Grotto being a folly felt most likely. Margate doesn’t seem to have any Roman or Phoenician history, or any other historical culture of noteworthiness for that matter. As a town its origins seem to spring up in the early Middle Ages but it doesn’t seem to hold any significance to religious groups either. That the grotto was “found” in 1835; that it has similarities to other grottoes from a century or so earlier (one was built at Goodwood in the 1740s); that the designs seem to include Indian, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman motifs; that getting winkles from Southampton to Margate in sufficient quantities prior to significant coastal trading would have been quite the task; that 1835 coincides with the early construction of the nearby Cliftonville Lido when it might be supposed an awful lot of shells were being dug up: all these point to a bit of “Why the hell not?” attitude from someone with a bit of money.

Or aliens.

We may never know, but the Shell Grotto is a lovely bit of mystery to have a nose around.

We emerged back into daylight and headed off to grab something to eat in town. On the way I snapped some more examples of street art in Margate. Certainly not the highest quality artwork we’ve ever seen, and enough low-quality tagging to point to young, local boredom and general dissatisfaction rather than inspired designs. Of course, Margate is part of Thanet and close to where Oswald Mosley-lite, Nigel Farage, was prominent at around this time, so it’s easy to conclude that any proximity to that self-serving, semi-sentient, cum-stain in a human skin formed from the sewn-together carcasses of blobfish might suck the spirit out of creative minds.

A break for something to eat and drink, then we continued around the bay and towards the sandy beach of Margate, known as the Main Sands.

We passed the Margate Clock Tower that was built to commemorate Queen Victoria‘s Golden Jubilee of 1887. The tower was completed in 1889 because late delivery on construction projects is what we do in this country. It’s our thing. We’ve seen more attractive clock towers around the country built at around the same time for the same reason (and we’ve seen some truly ugly ones too) but what makes Margate’s structure worth a look at, especially at one o’clock in the afternoon, is that it has a working time ball that rises and drops to signal the time. It’s one of very few working examples in the world (it had been broken but was repaired in 2014) as the purpose of a time ball – to allow vessels at sea to synchronise clocks with something visible on land – became obsolete with the invention of radio.

When people think of Margate they perhaps most likely think of Chas and Dave singing or of the Jolly Boy’s Outing episode of Only Fools and Horses, but they might also think about Dreamland. Dreamland is the site of an amusement park, hosting rides since the 1880s, although the name Dreamland itself wasn’t used until 1920 when a wooden rollercoaster on a scenic railway became the big attraction. That rollercoaster would aid in the park’s salvation as the area went into decline in the early 2000s and plans were drawn up to close it down, sell everything off, and redevelop it all; the Grade II-listed status of the railway hampered that and local objections further delayed things (there was an arson attack on the wooden railway to conveniently remove that obstruction which fortunately failed too) until the local council purchased the land and committed to bringing the attraction back.

The history of Dreamland includes the murder of a sex worker by a circus strongman and the death of its founder at home, killed by a hatchet wielded by an employee who then committed suicide on a railway line, so lots to dig into there, and its many attractions are obviously the main draw for most people, but we satisfied ourselves with admiring the external view only of the Dreamland cinema building. Built in 1935 and so obviously Art Deco that it hurts. It’s beautiful.

From one example of beautiful architecture to another, as very close to Dreamland, and with views directly at it from one side of the building, was Arlington House. You can instantly see this is modernist and brutal, and those wave patterns are just fabulous. They were incorporated to give the residents angled views in order to catch the sun when it shone. You can read more from the architect talking about that particular facet of the overall design and the general inspiration for the building in this excellent interview here: Russell Diplock, Architect behind Arlington House. If you were to read the Wikipedia entry for Arlington House then you’d see mention of a rooftop swimming pool with glass bottom – information gleaned from a 2018 newspaper article – but that’s the only source for that information, it’s not supported by any photographs or plans, it’s not mentioned in that interview or visible in any newspaper articles or adverts for the accommodation, and when I mentioned it on social media it was immediately dismissed as false by a local resident with interest in the building and area. In summary: we can say with high levels of certainty that no, Arlington House never had a swimming pool on its roof. Don’t believe everything you read on Wikipedia.

A couple more sights interrupted our short walk to the sands of the beach and which offer some momentary interest.

The Standing Stones are the result of a 1997 art project when writer Suzannah Dunn worked with children to explore ideas and thoughts about Margate, people, and feelings in words, stories, and poetry. From all the words written down and spoken by the children a poem was created and carved into stone by sculptor Paul Wehrle.

The Lifeboat Memorial is dedicated to the nine men lost in 1897 when the lifeboat Friend To All Nations capsized. The lifeboats were operated by local boatmen as a co-operative measure; each paid a share in to maintain the vessels, and each received a share of salvage when saving vessels and people in distress.

Margate Beach or Margate Sands or Main Sands was where we were heading. With us travelling out of season it was quiet and perhaps even a little foreboding under the light cloud cover, but on a bright, warm, sunny, summer day you can see why this wide beach of golden sands has been a popular destination for day-trippers for as long as it has. Margate ticks all the boxes for a great, traditional, British seaside resort.

Margate’s second tidal pool is on the main beach, although it’s categorised as a boating pond these days (perhaps because it’s less easy to keep clean) and swimming is not advised. It was nice enough to walk along its raised concrete edge during our stay and to take photos across the flat beach and seafront areas towards the town and harbour.

That brings this walk along Margate seafront to an end as we decided from looking at a map not to continue further around the coast but to head back inland a little way and start on the all-important job of pub-crawling and working out where we were going to eat that evening.

I don’t know that Margate has enough to keep people like us interested in the town itself for more than a single day at a time but then we don’t do amusement parks and we’re not the sort to lounge about on beaches. Families with young children could do a lot worse than here, even if using it as a base for some of the time to explore other parts of Kent. Prior to the explosion in package holidays, Margate was a very popular UK resort and for fairly obvious reasons, but that steady income from people staying for a week or so and being supplemented by day-trippers from London or thereabouts gave way to a just a relative trickle from the latter once it became easier to travel farther afield and to warmer parts with better value for money. Margate’s no different from any other place in the country in that respect, of course, and it suffers that same evidence of declining fortunes everywhere you look, but we like it a lot as a place. We’ve been to Margate more than once and we’ll go again, I’m certain.

Archaeologists have discovered evidence that there was habitation in the area dating back to the stone age, perhaps on account of its good oyster beds (the Romans collected them extensively much later), and in the eleventh century the area was marked by a white post which gave the town its name in the Domesday Book of Witenestaple, meaning “the meeting of the white post”. We didn’t know any of that then and we weren’t that interested in finding out. We simply stopped at Whitstable to take a quick stroll along the shoreline; a stretch of the legs before the several hours in the car to come.

Whitstable doesn’t have the prettiest of beaches unless you like shingle with industrial buildings to break up the views. The shallow water churning up the sand and staining the sea view brown does nothing to add to the attractiveness. But it’s the seaside. We like being beside the seaside. Except for Blackpool. Never Blackpool.

Given the less-than-gorgeous seascape it was a little bit of a surprise to see quite so many beach huts facing out to the water at Whitstable, but people do like their sea air. It was nice to see so many slight variations in style and colours too, even if a fair few looked in need of some care and attention. I must confess to preferring this evolved, added-to-over-time appearance of huts to the identical rows you often find elsewhere; this feels more natural, more real, less a money-spinner for the local council or landowners.

With the amount of travelling we do that involves being on or by the water it’s no surprise that certain seabirds crop up time and time again in the photos I take. Cormorants are a good example.

When we’d parked our car ahead of our short walk along the beach we’d spotted a sign pointing towards Whitstable Castle. Something we like almost as much as the seaside in the UK are castles so we walked there before leaving. In truth, this was a bit disappointing as the castle only dates from the eighteenth century and was originally just an octagonal tower that later had some extensions added to turn it into a manor house with some castle-like features. So, not a lot of history to discover there, but some pleasant gardens around it and we did pop into its Orangery Tearoom and grabbed a tea (that’s what you do in tearooms) and a cake for the onward journey.

In 2015 we were back in the Kent area once more as part of a short break in the south east and we realised we were ideally located to make a return trip to Leeds Castle and this time take a few more pictures with my somewhat beefier camera and lens, and hopefully of better quality too. A small number of them are in this post.

We had a lovely day for this return visit.

A castle has existed at this location since the ninth century with a lot of interesting historical events taking place in the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, including significant improvements during Henry VIII’s reign for his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. The moat was most likely added under the reign of Edward I, whose wife, Eleanor of Castile, had purchased it. However, the Tudor look of Leeds Castle today largely comes from remodelling in the nineteenth century.

We had a short walk around Leeds Castle and a brief visit inside it too, but we wanted to get back outside fairly quickly for two reasons.

The first thing we really wanted to do was enjoy the famous maze at Leeds Castle. I’m pleased to report that we reached the centre and the grotto once again. I do enjoy a good maze. More places in the world should have mazes.

The second thing was a show was due to start. When we’d first visited Leeds Castle in 2003 there had been an aviary in the grounds and I even have two photos from my old digital camera to prove it. The aviary was closed down in 2012 to save money but a replacement activity of a Birds of Prey flying experience was brought in and we were there in time to see it on this trip.

There’s no such thing as a bad castle to visit so we were always going to enjoy returning to Leeds Castle while we were in Kent. It’s got a moat and a maze and a grotto and you can watch owls and falcons flying at you. What’s not to like?