Dungeness

I was really looking forward to going to Dungeness, to see the biggest shingle beach in Europe, the looming spectacle of its power station, and Derek Jarman's pebbly garden. Fiona and I had arranged to meet friends for lunch at The Britannia pub – famous for its excellent fish and chips and its huge and unique collection of keyrings. The weather was appalling: strong winds are the norm at Dungeness but we had specially terrible ones that day, and sideways rain too. It was a bit of a white knuckle ride from Rye (Baa is 10ft tall – I may have mentioned that before – and doesn't much like a crosswind) and the landscape became increasingly barren. Visibility was so poor that we took a wrong turn down to the power station and found ourselves, having seen nothing taller than a sheep for several miles, in the employees very full carpark, under the shadow of all the pylons that converge there. It felt rather alarming.

We turned round and headed for the lighthouse and saw rows of houses near the sea. Do people live there? Or rent holiday cottages? Does the wind ever stop? As we got near our destination we saw more activity: a fish stall, two men mending a car, boats (on land, they must have been strapped down) and black-painted clapperboard houses like big black beetles in the shingle. Derek Jarman's, Prospect Cottage, is one of these. I had imagined it would be more remote, on its own, but it's easy to spot because it has plants and things in the garden, and yellow windowframes – (note on window saying you can look at the garden but don't peer in the window).

On to the pub and the van door was almost ripped out of my hand – there's no chance we would walk on the biggest shingle beach in Europe without taking off like kites - the wind blew our eyelids shut. But we had a lovely time – Mickey and Kitten were there, sitting amongst the keyrings, and the fish and chips didn't disappoint.

Sheppey

Well that was a rough night! I stayed in the main Camping and Caravanning Club site at Canterbury which is excellent – they get better and better. The rain lashed down all afternoon,  and didn't stop all that night. I felt too sick to contemplate the supper I had planned, so sat shivering in my coat, unable to remember how to put the heater on. Pathetic!  So I had a long, hot shower in the lovely bathroom block, filled a hot water bottle, and prepared for bed. And then I was very, very sick. Thank goodness! I don't know what the problem was... but at least it was soon over.

In the morning, still a bit wobbly, I packed up and set off to meet Sylvia (see first blog). We decided to visit the Isle of Sheppey. Sylvia used to live in Kent, and is about to move back, but neither of us knew much about Sheppey... except that Kent and London folk pour there on holiday to huge caravan parks. And I remember last year, when there was a terrible pile-up in fog on the Sheppey crossing, thinking what a good-looking bridge it was. I had been advised by wildfowler Dave to try the Harty Ferry Inn for lunch, so that's where we headed.

Sheppey Bridge looking south

The bridge is as nice as I thought, curling high across the Swale in the sunlight, and The Harty Ferry Inn is good too. It sits in a remote spot on the south of Sheppey looking across to Faversham, and the drive there is through low, open farmland, as rural as can be! Sheppey is a part farming - sheep and cattle on smallholdings, fields of rape and hedgerows bursting with cow parsley; part power station; and part dense holiday-land. The wind blows across the flat land, telegraph poles blown askew and the wild rural parts just doesn't relate to the holiday parks.

Yet just up the road Leysdown on Sea is trailer parks all the way, with a touch of Las Vegas, thick with take-aways and amusement arcades. We tried to book in to a caravan park, but they wanted £26 for one night, so we thought the price was too high to be funny. We visited the Abbey on a hill (the only one on Sheppey) at Minster, looked in at the jellied eel stall next door (but couldn't face those) and headed back via Sheerness to supper and spend the night in the Harty Ferry Inn car park. Sylvia's friends Martin and Judith from Canterbury were in the bar! They had sailed over from Faversham – so nowhere is really so remote!

Next day the Bank Holiday crowds were pouring north over the bridge to their holiday homes as we headed towards Faversham. Little did we know, as we were making a small detour into a Saturday morning car boot sale for a little bit of local colour, that 'Skull Cracker' was making his exit from HM Open Prison just down the road. As I write.. he's been incarcerated again.