broadstairs and Kent

Broadstairs is brim-full of nostalgic, old-world, seaside charm. Sandy bays meet surf schools. Fishermen's cottages meet Charles Dickens connections. Retro ice-cream parlours meet chic shops. Relaxed and unspoilt, this is the perfect place for chilled-out, family-friendly fun.the buffs

Broadstairs boasts an impressive seven sand-filled beaches and bays. Head to Joss Bay to learn to surf, or rural Botany Bay  to saunter amid towering chalk stacks. At the town's main beach, Viking Bay, discover children's rides, beach huts, surfing, a harbour and cliff-top promenade.

The town has a wealth of inviting cafes, restaurants and bars - two 1950's ice-cream parlours provide flavourful scoops of nostalgia too. In the High Street, historic red-brick and flint-fronted buildings are dotted between a rich stock of independent shops.

Broadstairs was Charles Dickens' favourite holiday spot. Explore a wealth of Dickens memorabilia and prints at the Dickens House Museum - also the former home of Mary Pearson Strong, who inspired the character Betsey Trotwood in David Copperfield. You can also visit Bleak House, an imposing, cliff-top building where Dickens holidayed in the 1850s and '60s, and wrote David Copperfield. Cliff-top paths link beautiful bays, just inland St Peter's village stages award-winning heritage tours, while the Crampton Tower Museum  provides an intriguing insight into Victorian engineering. After all that, kick-back and enjoy a free afternoon concert at the bandstand.

Each June, Broadstairs' week-long Dickens Festival overflows with costumed characters, talks, plays and beach outings. In mid-August, the funky Broadstairs Folk Week brings music sessions to pubs, gardens and beaches. Broadstairs Water Gala is a family-friendly fiesta of sandcastle-building, teddy bears picnicking and fireworks .too. While in October, the three-day Broadstairs Food Festival is an irresistible celebration of locally-produced, fine food and drink.  a range of Thanet and Kentish foods including cheeses, meats, artisan breads, pickles, cakes and pastries, all washed down with Kent wines, ciders and ales.

Cheesemaking is a delicate process with many variables, from what the cows have been eating that week and our changeable weather, to the exact levels of temperature and humidity in the making and ripening rooms.

At Kingcott Cheese Kentish Blue Mature is a full flavoured blue cheese, with long lasting depth and spicy tones coming through. It is handmade on the dairy farm in the heart of Kent, to our own recipe, using the creamy raw milk from our own cows.

Unpasteurised cows milk / Suitable for vegetarians

To complement – try Miller’s Damsels Oat Wafer Biscuits, Chunky Beetroot Chutney, or Quince Jelly

Storage – Refrigerate wrapped, but remove about an hour before serving and allow it to come to room temperature.

WAR IN BROADSTAIRS 

I was only 9 months old when the war started, so many of my memories are of stories told me by my parents, Reginald and Violet Wood. Unfortunately, they are both now dead, so I’m hoping I remember accurately what they told me.

Immediately before the war we (that is say, my parents, my sister Shirley and I) were living in Stanmore, Middlesex, but my father was spending a good deal of time abroad, working for the Canadian Government, helping to construct the exhibitions displaying Canada’s wares in various European cities. He had been apprenticed as a carpenter and joiner, but was a foreman by the time he got the job with the Canadian Government. In, I think, 1939 he returned from Holland by boat and was distressed to find that amongst the passengers were Jewish children who were being sent to the UK by their parents. The men on the boat who had cabins (and that included my father) gave them up to the children.

When the war started Dad’s job with the Canadian Government ended and he brought us down to Broadstairs to stay with his parents. By 1940 Thanet seemed less safe and Dad sent my Mum, Shirley and me inland. We rented a bungalow in Benenden, Kent. But Dad stayed with his parents in Broadstairs. My grandfather refused to leave his 2 allotments and my grandmother wouldn’t leave him! There was an attempt to evacuate my great grandmother who at that time was living with my grandparents and was over 90, but she was having none of that and came home, bringing with her another of her elderly neighbours.

Dad was by this time working on boats and ships in Ramsgate Harbour, patching up any that had been damaged. (He had tried to join both the Navy and Air Force but was told his skills were more useful as a civilian.) The Luftwaffe bombed Ramsgate Harbour on various occasions, but those working there were told to ignore the air raid sirens and continue working until bombs started to drop. On one occasion Dad was working with a young apprentice. As the bombs started to drop they both dived for shelter, in different directions. My Dad survived but the apprentice died.

Dad was still working at Ramsgate Harbour when the Dunkirk evacuation occurred. He was given the job of stacking rifles as the soldiers came off the boats. He also gave out cups of tea. He was there when the Guards, who had been fighting a rearguard action, arrived. He described how they looked when they arrived - their uniforms in rags, often barefoot. But they were with their sergeant major, who ordered them to form up and they marched off as if they were on the parade ground. There was a collection of clothes for the returning soldiers at the time, to which my Dad contributed some of his own clothes.

Dad had joined the Home Guard. Mum said his uniform was far too big for him. At least he was given a rifle, since the Kent coast was quite a likely site for invasion. In some areas all the Home Guard had were pitchforks. His particular detachment of Home Guard were told that if there were an invasion they were to make their way somehow to Pluck’s Gutter, which would be the first line of defence. Their families would have to fend for themselves. One night he was on clifftop looking out to sea when he saw numbers of landing craft emerging from the sea. Horrified, he went straight to his CO, who turned to Dad and asked: “What should we do?” Fortunately, the moon came out at that point and they saw that the “landing craft” were, in fact, huge banks of seaweed.

Benenden was not that safe a place, as some of the dog fights of the Battle of Britain were going on overhead. We didn’t stay there for very long, because Dad was sent all over the country in the next few years, mainly helping to build factories or making sure they could continue production after they had been bombed. Dad went into Coventry the morning after the very big raid on that city. He had heard the noises made by the bombs dropping during the night and was fearful about what he would find. As he was approaching Coventry he could make out the shape of the cathedral and reassured himself that things couldn’t be too bad if it was still standing, but when he got closer he realised it was an empty shell and saw that the area around was flattened. He wasn’t allowed to stay and help dig out survivors but had to go and make sure the local factories were in working order.

We tended to follow my father, so my sister attended school in Monmouthshire (where my other grandparents lived), Walsall, Winnick, Broadstairs and Cardiff. We spent some time back with my grandparents in Broadstairs, I think in about 1943-4, but then we went to Cardiff, where I started school at the age of 5.

Since I was only six when the war ended, much of what was going on went over my head. I remember trains full of soldiers. They tended to be kind to my Mum and her two little girls, giving up their seats for us and generally making sure we were OK. (Did the fact that my Mum was an attractive young woman have something to do with this, or were people more helpful in those days? I suspect it was a bit of both.) I remember the sound of aeroplanes. I found the sound of a single plane overhead strangely reassuring, but the sound of bombers droning over us at night was much more threatening. The anti-aircraft guns were also very noisy. I remember the sound of the doodlebugs - once heard, never forgotten. I remember sitting in the cellar in Alexandra Road, Broadstairs, with the sound of bombs dropping nearby and the road being raked with machine gun fire, and the little boy I had been playing with crying because Mum was preventing him from running home to his mother.

I didn’t really feel deprived because there was a war on. It was all I could remember. People would say things like: “After the war you’ll be able to have a teddy bear, ice cream, lots of sweets,” but I didn’t really believe in “after the war” and many of the things I was promised I’d never tasted and therefore didn’t miss. I would have liked a teddy bear, but by the time they were being made again I was too old for one, and my younger sister got one instead. In the meantime, I drank my cod liver oil and orange juice, ate my dried eggs and spam and was happy. The fact that sweets were on the ration meant we were only allowed a quarter of a pound a week (I usually opted for liquorice all sorts), which was probably very good for us. We seemed to get quite a lot of fruit in season, and to this day I prefer fresh apples or cherries to a box of chocolates and I still think a boiled egg for breakfast is a bit special.

We returned to Broadstairs towards the end of the war. My grandfather had died and my parents found a house in Queen’s Road into which my parents, my sister and I, my grandmother, my great grandmother and my aunt moved. My aunt Vera was working at the Food Office and my Mum joined her there for a while, but then she became pregnant with my sister, Jane, who was born in October 1945. According to my Mum, she more or less ran the department which dealt with the retail businesses in Thanet, while my aunt was more or less running the department dealing with the public and their rations. In both cases a man was nominally in charge.

I was still 5 when we returned to Broadstairs and started to attend St. Mildred’s School. The children were only in one side of the school. The other had been turned into a British restaurant. Shirley and I once sampled the food at this restaurant. We thought it horrible and decided it was much better going home for lunch every day. I can remember sitting in the air raid shelter at the end of the playground, singing songs like “Daisy, Daisy”. It was probably a strongly built building, but it was above ground, whereas the shelter for the older children was on the other side of the school and underground. We now had a Morrison shelter at home. This was a large, strong metal table which we had in one of the downstairs rooms. We often slept underneath it.

I remember seeing soldiers climbing up the cliffs and wondering how they managed to climb so high. By this time there were lots of American soldiers around as well as the familiar British ones. Little gangs of children would go up to them and call out: “Got any gum, chum?” I don’t remember them ever giving us any gum. After the war Manston became an American Air Force base for some years. We noticed the American servicemen seemed to be a bit broader across the behind than most British men of their age. I’m sure this had a lot to do with their diet. People in general seemed to be thinner in those days.

It's late and we're at Folkestone's Skuba Bar, the night before our 40-mile, four-day trek along the coast of south-east Kent. Tomorrow we'll stagger to Dover, and in the following days head on to Deal, Ramsgate and Margate, the idea being to peer into these towns on the eve of the opening next year of High Speed 1, the fast train line from London that will transform this area, neglected since the advent of the package holiday.

The next morning, under a grey duvet of sky, Russell, my partner, and I step out of Hotel Relish, a grand Victorian pile and, fuzzy-headed, feel the ennui of the seaside town: grubby villas, care homes with fading signs, an empty ice-cream parlour.

But we turn a corner, and find hope, like the blustery wind, surging through the high street: it has a gleaming new £30m shopping centre, Bouverie Place, and the Creative Quarter - steep cobbled streets, wholefood cafes and galleries - is as hip as Brighton. Civic pride is everywhere. 'There's a farmers' market on the harbour, a brilliant amphitheatre, and a coastal park with pine trees,' Verity had enthused last night, passing round the tequilas. 'For me, moving from Wolverhampton, that was difficult to grasp.'

But it's time to leave. Curving round the harbour, we climb the steep undulating cliff towards Dover. This 10-mile stretch, known as Hellfire Corner in 1940, is scarred by war. Heads bowed, eyes watering in the wind, we pass the Battle of Britain memorial, a propeller-shaped landmark dominated by a contemplative pilot gazing out to sea. Further along, air-raid shelters dot the cliff.

Advertisement

In the car park for Western Heights, a nature reserve near Dover, lone men sit in cars staring at the harbour. The town below seems empty. The Roman Painted House is closed. We wonder why, with such potential, Dover feels so down. Peter, our host at Blakes, a restaurant-with-rooms on Castle Street, has an explanation: 'People pass through: 15 million step off the ferries every year. Only 150,000 actually visit.'

Nightspot Funky Monkey is empty tonight, but its dress policy is chilling: 'No sportswear, shorts, vests, sleeveless T-shirts, hoodies, baseball caps, chunky jewellery, rings.' We climb the hill instead and discover the White Horse pub, a quirky shrine to cross-Channel swimming, with pen-scrawled walls and ceiling. 'Tough swim but job done,' writes Graham Coleman (16 hours 42 minutes).

Next morning things improve, with a breakfast of creamy scrambled eggs and home-smoked salmon. Then we head to the port to meet our friends Nikki and Julia for the 12-mile hike to Deal.

It's Saturday, and the route is busy. We career down a pine-filled slope to St Margaret's Bay to pose for pictures outside Noel Coward's beach house, and arrive at sundown in Deal's Middle Street conservation area. It's hard to believe that this gentrified town, with its delis and antique shops, once had a reputation for smuggling. Daniel Defoe called it 'barbarous'. Its popularity with wealthy Londoners dates from the 1960s, when a gay estate agent, Roger Bright, started selling cottages to theatrical friends. It's unlike Dover in that no one passes through, according to Ralph Cades, a shop owner: 'People only come to Deal for a purpose.'

After a night at a charming boutique B&B, Number One, we're back on the beach. The 12-mile stretch from Deal to Ramsgate slogs in a straight line past the suburbs of Sandwich, an industrial estate and a stretch of dual carriageway. We pass household waste sites, sheet metal works, and scrapyards, before we hit Pegwell Bay, the low sun bouncing off the mud.

It's the last morning. The others have gone back to London and I sit alone on the veranda of the Royal Harbour Hotel in Ramsgate, one of the great Victorian resorts, watching the orange-red streaks in the sky. This can't be England, I think, as I hop over the road to the emerald green marina, tasting the slight saltiness in the air. The owners of bars with Ibizan names such as Enoteca or Rokka are setting tables and chairs outside as, with a final glance at the crescent of Regency townhouses, I leave for Margate.

Even alongside the moribund bungalows that line the route around Thanet, life twinkles. 'Off We Go Laughing,' giggles one commemorative bench, 'In memory of my dear old cockney mum,' rasps another, as the smell of fresh-mown grass heralds Broadstairs, where I grew up. I recollect my childhood, learning the alphabet here in the sand, and gulp down the colours of the boats by the jetty - red, yellow and blue.

Margate has many claims to fame - the first resort to introduce bathing machines (1753) and deck chairs (1898), the 'loveliest skies in Europe' (Turner), Ramsgate's 'nom de plume' (Oscar Wilde) - but on a Monday it's snoozing, with Droit House gallery and most of the old town shut. The lovely old Walpole Bay Hotel, where Tracey Emin occasionally gives readings, is deserted. And the jetty is closed because its fishermen's huts are being reinvented as cafes in time for summer.

A stroll in town reveals culture everywhere: students have designed boards for empty shopfronts, the former M&S is now the Turner Contemporary Project Space and a purpose-built Turner gallery is due to open in 2010. A boutique hotel will open alongside the Turner. And still the arcades on the esplanade bleep and flash. 'We're living with the legacy of mismanaging Margate's heritage,' says Stephen Roper, of the Old Town Gallery. 'But it's all changing.'

The sun is setting. I stand in the vast bay, where TS Eliot, post-breakdown, realised (in 'The Wasteland') that he could 'connect nothing with nothing'. Gulls peck on the red-gold ripples of sand. A woman stands, hands deep in the pockets of her orange cagoule. Eastern European voices echo by the water's edge.

Margate's clotted identity - multiculturalism, history, hallucinatory seafront - seems to bring together the disparate elements of this trip: fear, hope, change. As the famous sign says outside the station: Dreamland Welcomes You.

Essentials

by rail with Southeastern (0845 000 2222;southeasternrailway.co.uk) from London to Folkestone (single fare £23.20) and from Margate to London (£16.90).

t Hotel Relish, Folkestone, doubles from £90 (01303 850952;hotelrelish.co.uk); Blakes of Dover, from £50 (01304 202194; blakesofdover.com); Number One, Deal (01304 364459; numberonebandb.co.uk) from £65; Royal Harbour Hotel, Ramsgate (01843 591514; royalharbourhotel.co.uk) from £98.