Looking forward because its Valentine’s Day – so it is appropriate that we should be spending the day together. Looking forward too because we’ll be able to discover close up a place that we tend to rush through – Dungeness. There’s no doubting the spookiness of the place and there’s probably not much doubt too that the place isn’t that attractive on the surface. But its a place that has attracted people for years and years. Its quirkiness, its quaintness and its remoteness combine to fascinate me – so I'm really looking forward to the first part of our walk.
Oh … and this walking business. We won't actually be walking today. Nope. You see, because we are supposed to be in the middle of training for the London Marathon – and failing miserably – Cathy has decided that today we should treat the 13 or so miles as a training run. So ....is this going to be a run around Britain?
You can obviously tell that we’re athletes just by looking at us and, indeed, we’re veterans (in more than ways than one!) of some 30-odd half marathons and half a dozen full marathons over the last five or six years. Our greatest ever achievement is probably taking part in the Himalaya 100 Mile Stage Race in India. In 2008 Cathy and I decided it would be a once in a lifetime trip and, although I was nowhere near fit I did manage to cover around 70 miles – and Cathy was magnificent and completed the whole race in under 35 hours.
In fact that once in a lifetime experience is about to be repeated as we make a return visit to India on October when we take a group of 15 or so other runners to experience one of the world’s greatest sporting events.
But don’t let that track record fool you! No stereotype athlete physique for me! And I am deceptively slow!
Anyway, to the walk.
We left home for the second stage of our walk – and for the second time, the ground was covered in snow and my God was it cold! And I was going to run in it???
We drove to Dungeness and parked at the terminus for the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch railway and set off. I have mentioned that we don’t get many opportunities to spend time in Dungeness. We organise the local Half Marathon in Lydd which used to skirt past the village and we have been many times to the Pilot Inn – which serves some of the best fish ‘n’ chips you’ll eat south of the Watford gap.
The New York Times once said 'if Kent is the Garden of England, Dungeness is the back gate'. Well, if you take a trip through this peculiar community located on a headland in the shadows of a nuclear power plant you’ll understand why that quote is just so apt!
Officially classed as a desert, Dungeness is, apparently, the home of a variety of wildlife and more than 600 different types of plants – about one third of all plants found throughout the UK. I only counted two – grass and weeds. Oh - and some flower poking out of the snow. Dungeness is also, apparently again, one of the best places in Britain to find rare species of moths, butterflies, bees, beetles and spiders. But I didn’t see any of these either. In fact the only species there in any abundance today were human beans out for a Sunday morning stroll.
It was very cold as we walked through the strange collection of wooden shacks, huts and old railway carriages which make up the local’s housing estate. The whole area is privately owned - originally owned by the Tufton Family, then Southern Railways who then sold it on to a Mr G T Paine. The estate is now owned by the Paine family trust.
Most of the shacks on Dungeness originate from the 1920s when workers employed by the then Southern Railway in Ashford purchased old rolling stock and had them towed off at the end of the line to become holiday shacks. The cost of these holiday 'chalets' was originally about £10 – and they are now said to be worth in excess £200,000.
There is an excellent source of information for Dungeness here
No visit to Dungeness is complete without a nosey at Prospect Cottage, formerly owned by the film director Derek Jarman. The cottage is painted black, with a poem, part of John Donne's "The Sunne Rising", written on one side in black lettering.
The house is now owned by the National Trust and as we looked around the exterior – which was difficult because of the snow, we realised that the house is still inhabited. Indeed on the window is a tiny notice which you need to bend down and stare at to read it – the message? Well basically it tells you not to bend down and stare!
Next to the lifeboat station you can see one of the original Tan Coppers which, in years gone by, were used for 'tanning' the fishing nets. In days gone by, fishing nets, if left untreated, would soon rot. To combat this they were dipped in these Tan Coppers – something which became a bit of a ritual. Modern nets are treated and do not need dipping.
Dungeness was the site of operations that were part of Operation Pluto. Operation Pluto (Pipe-Lines Under the Ocean) was a World War II operation by British scientists, oil companies and armed forces to construct undersea oil pipelines under the Channel between England and France. Allied forces on the continent required a tremendous amount of fuel and pipelines were considered necessary to relieve the dependence on oil tankers, which could be slowed by bad weather and were susceptible to enemy attack. The idea was to use adapted submarine telephone cable and in 1944 some of the world's first submarine oil pipelines were laid between Dungeness and France in Operation Pluto. The lines from Dungeness were part of a network called Dumbo and ran to Ambleteuse in France.
The problem this morning was that trying to run through Dungeness is just so difficult because there’s so much to see. And so after much ‘encouragement’ from Cathy I finally had to leave behind the shacks and start running down the coast.
And promptly couldn't resist first popping into the garden of The Pilot Inn!
I’ve mentioned before that this is a favourite pub of ours and we have enjoyed many a fish and chip lunch and supper here. The pub is hugely popular and it is not unusual to find a queue forming outside the front door half an hour before opening time! The pub is built from the timber of a Spanish ship, The Alfresia, which was lured aground and wrecked by smugglers in the 1820's.
But it doesn’t matter how many times you visit a place, you do get a different perspective when walking – hence my surprise at seeing the signpost in the pub garden. I have never seen the sign before!
Finally we left the headland and trotted off towards our destination for today – Hythe. I stopped only to take a quick snap of the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway (more later) and I also doffed my cap to another quite spectacular phenomenon.
I first saw the ‘Ears’ on the TV programme, Coast. Until then I’d never even heard of them – never mind the fact that they were on our doorstep and we’d driven past them on numerous occasions.
The Ears are located just outside Dungeness in a place called Denge. Known as the "Listening Ears" they were built between 1928 and 1930 and the three massive concrete structures formed an experimental early warning system that aimed to detect invading aircraft by focusing sound waves. The site was chosen as being one of the quietest in Britain – hmm, not sure about that now!
Cutting through the scientific mumbo jumbo they were indeed just massive ears that were able to hear enemy aircraft much sooner than the human ear – because, one assumes, they were actually modelled on the human ear. Sadly no sooner had they invented the things then some even cleverer Numptie at the MOD invented radar and rendered them useless. Still – well worth the visit to see a real but of wartime history.
Several were built along the south and east coasts, but the complex at Denge is the best preserved.
Continuing our run we soon arrived in Greatstone. Greatstone’s name comes from the size of pebbles found along the beach - now fancy that! It was only created in the early part of the 20th Century and originally based its hopes on the future on the Romney Hythe and Dymchurch Railway which used to call at Greatstone on Sea, however the expected boom of the village never happened and the station was finally scrapped in 1971.
During the Normandy Landings in 1944 the area was used to ship fuel across the English Channel to the Mulberry Harbour in France. Some of the bungalows were requisitioned to hide the pumping stations for the fuel being pumped by PLUTO to France.
The beurocrats amongst you will be delighted to know that Greatstone was one of the first villages whose development was controlled by the 1940 Town Planning Act.
So there.
We continued our pacy run, stopping only to take the odd (ahem) photograph en route and arrived in Littlestone-on-Sea – a place I know very little about! Apparently the place was built in the 1880's by Sir Robert Perks, as a resort for the gentry. At low tide a WWII 'Mulberry Harbour' is visible
The Grand Hotel and a terrace of houses mark the spot that Sir Robert decided to create the new resort. He laid out the Littlestone golf course to go with the resort, but the tourists didn't come in the numbers needed. One of the reasons, apparently, was that the flippin’ club was a ‘dry’ club! Well, what did he expect??
The 120ft high red brick water tower which we had to come off the sea front to view, was built in 1890 to provide water to the resort.
After a couple of miles trotting along the sea front we finally arrived in Dymchurch.
Now Dymchurch is a place we know well – or at least knew well – some years ago. It’s a place we used to take the kids to ride the small funfair … but my how the place has deteriorated.
During the 17th and 18th centuries, smuggling was rife all along the south east coast of England. Due to its remote location Romney Marsh and the surrounding areas were amongst the busiest locations for illicit trade. Inspiration from this gave rise to Dymchurch being the setting of the "Doctor Syn" novels, based on smuggling, by Russell Thorndike.
Today Dymchurch appears to us to be a symbol of Britain’s decaying seaside heritage. Boarded up shops and a High Street that is dominated by charity shops and cheap fancy goods tells its own story. That’s not us being snobbish – I love nothing better than a seaside village or town stuffed full of fish and chips and beach toy shops. But Dymchurch cant even sustain them.
A great shame.
Dymchurch is also dominated by what is known as the Dymchurch Redoubt – a superb example of a Martello Tower. In fact, three Martello towers as well as the Dymchurch Redoubt are located here, all built during the Napoleonic Wars.
Hythe 
By the time we’d passed through Dymchurch we were beginning to feel the pace a little and to be honest we were gazing at the distant Hythe with our poor cow-eyes wishing we were there!
Eventually, some 13 miles after leaving Dungeness we arrived in Hythe. The town is one of the five original Cinque Ports. From the sea-front the town is on level ground and very close by is the Royal Military Canal which was dug during the Napoleonic era as a defensive measure against a French invasion.
Our final destination in Hythe was the Romney Marsh, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway – what used to be the World's Smallest Public Railway. Hythe is at one end of the line – the other being Dungeness. And that meant I could fulfil one of my ambitions – to take the train back to Dungeness and collect our car as well.
The railway was officially opened by Laurel and Hardy in 1947 when they were greeted at Hythe by the then owner of the railway, Captain J E P Howey.
The railway was constructed during the 1920s and opened on 16 July 1927, as the dream of millionaire racing drivers Captain J.E.P. Howey and Count Louis Zborowski. Zborowski was killed in a motor racing accident at Monza before the Romney Marsh site was chosen, and Howey continued the project alone. As well as being a tourist attraction, this railway is also a public service between the small towns and villages between Hythe and Dungeness and is under contract to the local council to transport children to and from The Marsh Academy in New Romney.
From 1926 to 1978, the RH&DR held the title of the "Smallest public railway in the world" (in terms of track gauge) but the title was lost to the 121⁄4 in (311 mm) gauge Réseau Guerlédan in France in 1978.
We had a great opportunity to travel the length of the line as we made our way back to Dungeness. Unfortunately our journey back was somewhat stressful as I couldn’t find the car keys – had we left them in the train station at Hythe, in a shop where we stopped for a drink – or simply lost them on the beach.
We needn’t have worried.
When we arrived back at Dungeness we found them – still in the car door!!
A great day out though – finished off with a lovely drink in the Britannia Inn – a roaring and very welcome log fire and a very pleasant bowl of chips to accompany our beer!
Miles covered 13.86 miles
Time taken 3 hours and 45 minutes
Miles covered to date 25.30 miles
Time taken to date 7 hours and 48 minutes
