The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
Time out in ‘Britain’s only desert’
Weird but wonderful Dungeness in Kent is luring weekenders with great food and new places to stay, says Juliet Rix
Deeply traditional and undeniably trendy, apparently “barren’ but astonishingly biodiverse, a pristine wilderness dotted with human detritus, a National Nature Reserve overshadowed by a nuclear power station, Dungeness is a mass of contradictions. And love it or hate it (and it is nothing if not a Marmite destination), residents and visitors alike agree that it is one of the weirdest places in England.
On the southern edge of Kent, two roads merge into a single ribbon cutting across the flat, treeless landscape of one of Europe’s largest expanses of shingle. A headland (“ness” is Old Norse for “nose”), sticking out into the English Channel, Dungeness is often called “Britain’s only desert”. It receives a bit too much rainfall to qualify, but it’s easy to see how it earned the description. Beautiful to some, desolate to others, artists have found attraction in both.
Paddy Hamilton sits on a wooden bench under a green umbrella in his Dungeness Open Studios, a little garden planted with a few painted sheds (an old bait hut, a boat winch shelter…) full of his evocative paintings and prints. He was drawn here by the “big skies and freedom to walk where you wish”. Dungeness “expands horizons, expands time… it gives you a non-prescriptive life”.
Hamilton’s home is a converted 100-year-old railway carriage – and his is not the only one. In the 1920s, some 30 carriages were dragged from the declining mainline railway onto the shingle to become dwellings. The neighbouring Caithness Gallery is built of two. And our own temporary home, the delightful, newly rentable Log Cabin, is constructed from three (plus extensions). Once you know what to look for (vaulted roof, narrow doors) you suddenly see that many of the houses here incorporate this strange bit of history that prefigured the closure of this railway line in 1937.
By then, however, the miniature Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway was already puffing across the point carrying passengers on its tiny i‘One of the weirdest places in England’: old wooden fishing boats dot the shingle
15-inch tracks to the little station and the End of the Line café (which brings to mind, not inappropriately on a bleak day, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams’s science fiction comedy series). It’s a fun ride, the steam train’s smoky smell-of-the-past accompanying a tour of local back gardens, and a great sweep across the shingle alternating bare pebbles with long stripes of vegetation.
And it is quite some vegetation. The other side of the lines from the station is the perfect place for a bit of botanical browsing. I crunch across it with Natural England’s conservation officers Phil Williams and Ken Obbard: “The vegetation here is totally different from anywhere else,” they tell me. Dungeness is home to a staggering 600 types of plant, a full third of all those growing in this country. We spot the near-threatened Nottingham catchfly (no longer found in Nottinghamshire) as well as sheepsbit, rare mosses and delicate lichens. Lumps of dusty-green cladonia (reindeer moss) spangle the ground like terrestrial sponges while sculpture-like twigs are covered in a flaky crust of sunshine yellow.
There are birds too, enough to merit an observatory and an RSPB reserve, which is celebrating its 90th birthday this year. Migrants flying from across the world and rare “vagrants” that have strayed off-course make landfall here, and there is everything from seabirds, waders, ducks and geese to regal raptors and tiny songbirds. The nuclear power plant doesn’t put them off. In fact, we spot a little black redstart perched on the power station wall. They nest here, apparently mistaking it for a rocky outcrop.
Dungeness keeps gathering human blow-ins too. Walking along the coast road, the traditional fishermen’s bungalows are now punctuated with the smooth, dark walls and shiny glass of architect-designed additions. One trendily converted concrete box (along with its next-door twin, yet to be raised from dereliction) was once a secret generator shed for Pluto, the Second World War “Pipeline Under the Ocean”, covertly laid in 1944 all the way from here to France to fuel the Allied invasion.
Even Ed Sheeran has bought a property here, but he’s not much seen. The most famous Dungeness devotee undoubtedly remains Derek Jarman. His black weatherboard Prospect Cottage with its buttercup yellow paintwork – home to the cult indie film-maker from 1986 until his premature death in 1994 – has been recently saved for the nation. Its new custodian, Creative Folkestone, is completing essential maintenance before offering pre-booked tours from mid-July.
Open to all at all times, however, is Jarman’s “paradise” – the garden he created on the shingle around the cottage. Hardy plants, sea-sculpted driftwood, an old boat and a variety of flotsam and jetsam are artfully arranged in harmony with the view beyond. The beach, dotted with white-flowering sea kale, stretches out to a handful of colourful fishing boats and derelict-looking rusty yellow tractors still used to haul them ashore.
Just up the road at the Snack Shack, we settle to sample the boats’ catch, at a picnic table in the sun between a pile of lobster pots and a blue-green container with a serving hatch. This place is no blow-in; it is run by a local family. Kelly manages it, while her brother (who took
I watch the sky turn to stripes of slate grey and sunset pink above the endless stretch of mottled shingle
over from their father) provides the fish. As I order a scallop flatbread, Kelly points out across the shingle: “I can see them from here when they’re scalloping. Those scallops were caught just there.” They are delicious.
I buy some fresh fish for dinner and wander back to the railway carriage cottage where I am staying, to watch the sky turn to stripes of slate grey and sunset pink above the endless stretch of mottled shingle and shimmering sea. Dungeness has inspired countless album covers, music videos and lyrics. I put on Athlete’s 2008 song Dungeness – slightly whacky, but strangely soothing. Rather like the place:
“I found a rope and a rubber glove/ You found some pretty stones and they had holes so you could tie them together…/ Let’s go to Dungeness…”