When I went to Ramsgate last week I didn't stop there, I continued around the coast. This means I can also bring you reportage from Broadstairs, thereby getting additional value from my day out (and if you're really lucky I'll bring you Margate later).
✉Broadstairs is probably the most seasidey of Thanet's coastal towns, and in a good way too. A horseshoe of a promenade overlooks a crescent of a beach, very much from above, with food and ice cream up top and sand and seaweed down below. A lift connects the two but it's often closed, and permanently closed at present, so rather a lot of stairs remains your best option. This is Viking Bay, no longer subject to horny-helmeted invasion from offshore and all the better for it.
✉ One arc of beach huts runs along the sand and another, much smarter, on a raised terrace behind. The southernmost corner of the sand has been genteelly fenced to surround swings and roundabouts - more of the former than the latter. The beach wasn't at its busiest midweek, despite the very decent weather, so two very large signs pointing inland towards 'Deckchairs' were proving unnecessary. That said a few topless bookreaders had turned up, plus a grazing couple safely tucked behind a windbreak, and I was wholly unnerved by the ring of seagulls surrounding one particular elderly couple.
✉ Up on the boardwalk a lot more activity was going on. A crowd of appreciative pensioners were engrossed beside the bandstand listening to a bloke in a flat cap singing Valerie. Restaurant terraces were packed with couples dining on seafood and fizz, especially at the back of the hotel where Charles Dickens stayed in <checks plaque> 1839, 1840, 1845, 1849 and 1853, penning a few chapters of Nicholas Nickleby while he was here. The Broadstairs Information Kiosk apologises for being closed for the remainder of the year, a sign which I suspect went up in March, but hopes to be back in 2021. The longest queues were outside Morelli's, Broadstairs' fabulously Art Deco ice cream parlour, which was a shame because the prevailing rigmarole proved just enough to put me off buying a classic double scoop.
✉ Twirling offshore were the turbines of the ThanetWind Farm. They're actually eight miles offshore, so somewhat indistinct, but a decent zoom (or a good pair of binoculars) make them a lot clearer. The 100 turbines are laid out in rows half a mile apart, so if you walk along the coast to the right point the seemingly random blades suddenly combine to form a multi-fingered beast. This wind farm was the largest in the world when it opened in 2010, generating enough juice to power a quarter of a million households, but technology has moved on since and it's no longer even in the Top 20. Plans for 34 more turbines, closer to the shore and collectively more powerful, were turned down by the government earlier this year.
✉ The clifftop between Ramsgate and Broadstairs makes for an attractive (and extremely accessible) stroll. At one point the path heads through a secluded park but most of the way it's all coast-facing promenade, lined on one side by homes you'd retire to (or buy up well before you retired to take full advantage). A lot of dogs get walked here, generally of the small kind. Memorial benches remind passers by that Jack and Doreen, Gordon and Vera, Moss and Joyce loved this place. What I didn't really get was a proper sense of the sheer chalk cliff face beneath me, save at a few choice spots where a headland provided an oblique viewpoint... or by reading the repeated signs warning me that clambering over the railings probably meant death.
✉ Outside one of these clifftop houses I found this car with this numberplate, which I present without comment, other than to say of course it's a Kia, and that when this particular plate was released in 1996 the DVLA can't have been as censorious (or as alert) as they are today.
✉ The only break in the cliff face south of Broadstairs occurs at Dumpton Gap, a V-shaped notch where a steep straight path provides access to a small beach. In 1914 this spot was chosen as one end of the Siemens Brothers Anglo-Belgian telephone cable, consisting of 28 copper wires wound into seven groups of four, the other end being at Ostend. A separate cable ran from here to the North Goodwin Light Vessel. European communication is no longer reliant on the hut at the top of the ramp, so you could probably ring down to Sam's Cafe and get them to do you a bacon sandwich using much superior mobile technology.
✉ Meanwhile to the north of Broadstairs the sandy bays and residential clifftops continue. The surf was up this time last week so a few groups of wetsuited boarders trod water in the breakers waiting to ride the North Sea back to shore. Cyclists whizzed by in slightly podgy lycra, following the Saxon Shore Way for an exhilarating long distance ride. And on North Foreland, where the houses got larger, grander and much more security conscious, I made sure to check out the top of the staircase cut into the chalk which inspired John Buchan's 39 Steps. I wish I'd dared to follow it down to the beach the first time I came here in 2008 because it's subsequently been gated and locked with an electronic security code. I tried 3939 on a hunch, but sadly it didn't open.
