An Empire of Sand
There are outrageous numbers of unique and stunning landscapes in the British Isles. Each are with its own visit-us-please-we’re-skint website and a horrible strapline that means absolutely nothing: Come Find Your Dream, Feel The Spirit – you get the drift? This is usually followed by the stock iconic photos that will drag the very squeezed visitor pound into the local coffers.
Dungeness need not bother. It is shockingly photogenic and the residents don’t really care if you turn up or not. Camber Sands pulls in the ‘family units’ – as the post-lockdown apocalyptic queues recently showed. One doesn’t land in Dungeness by accident, you don’t pass through, you don’t point and say ‘Blimey what’s that weird stuff over yonder?’ You plan to go there. We are scratching a twenty-year itch calling us to this most mysterious of landscapes. We promise not to freak-out. We know what to expect.
Getting there from the west, well, Hove actually, is reasonably unpleasant. Driving through Eastbourne, Bexhill and Hastings is not an experience you’d get up in the morning and rub your hands over. Pretty much like driving anywhere in the United Kingdom to be honest. Near to the landing area is Winchelsea, where the great Spike Milligan’s grave is a must-see if you’re over the age where you think selfies of your eyebrows are on a level with Picasso’s Guernica – even though you’ve taken your own drunken selfies in the pub toilet before falling into the bar and getting sutured by underpaid NHS staff. Winchelsea will also scramble your brain when you discover that it used to be a small port but is now on a hill miles from the sea.
Our base camp is The Gallivant, a self-proclaimed Boho Retreat at the back of Camber Sands; all bleached wood and healthy looking enthusiastic staff who are delighted to be working again having been scratching their arses and watching Judge Judy since March. The Great God that is Jay Rayner dribbled over the restaurant here so if it’s good enough for Jay…. Camber Sands is an intriguing prospect – it’s been all over the news recently as the Great British Public grabbed their birthright of a ‘day at the beach’ and shat all over the global disaster that is the covid-19 pandemic. Let’s see if they are all on parade in their plastic-dumping glory. They are. A very large and obviously very urban family group of around 79 members (tiny exaggeration) are angrily wondering why the seagulls are constantly pestering them. Arms flap, towels are waved skywards, children jump up and down hopelessly and frustration mounts. They are somehow yet to realise that the feast they have carefully laid out on the beach – which would make Henry the Eighth blush – might possibly attract the local seagulls who have been living off Deliveroo scraps since March.
It’s low tide on this huge beach and the BBC Shipping Forecast is brought to life by the exposed navigation beacon outside Rye Harbour, I imagine it to be ‘Channel Light Vessel Automatic’ or something equally evocative from a youth spent under the bedclothes. Some guy in a Jack Wills polo shirt stands by the magnificent structure looking bored as his dog pisses near the sacred beacon. We leave…
Back in the car park a parent tells a whinging portly child ‘If you never walk anywhere on holiday you’ll get fat again…’ Again! My mind explodes with visions of how little tubs might have looked prior to this ice cream munching triathlon he’s now enduring. There are dilapidated clap-board houses sitting next to over-designed contemporary cube properties, the telegraph poles are the old style ones with anti-climb tar and the rungs above. I bet a vital organ that the postman wears a little peaked cap and touches the brim whilst handing out a jaunty ‘morning’ to everyone except the ‘nice black fella’ in number 27.
