Visiting History - Day 2

Today was bright and sunny. We went down to Broadstairs again and had some morning tea and walked through the village and down to the foreshore. Charles Dickens used to spend a lot of time in this area and wrote a lot of his works here. Up on the headland is Bleak House which Dickens used as the name of one of his novels written in the early 1850’s.

From there we headed to Reculver which is west along the coastline. It has a ruin of a church originally built in 669AD with the two spires that remain on the site today added in the 12th century.

The site was first used as a Roman fort in the first century and remains of that fort are still seen on the site today.


Being right on the coastline some of the land collapsed back into the sea and large reinforcements were placed along the coastline in the 1960’s to stop any further erosion.

From the fallen materials of this church a new church was called St Mary’s was built in 1809 in the nearby town of Hillborough. Mel & Jim’s two sons were christened in this church and I include a photo for my mother because she really liked this church on her visits to the area.

Nearby off the coast of the village of Herne Bay are 30 Wind Turbines built in 2005 at a cost of 105 million pound. They are built five miles off the coast and provide enough energy to power 100,000 homes in the surrounding villages. Each one of the thirty towers weighs 216 tons and is seventy metres high. They are in the background of this photo if you have good eyesight.

From there we travelled further along the coast to Whitstable which is a fishing port.

A large fish market and fish restaurants are all along the harbour foreshore. Former fisherman’s huts have been remodelled and now cater for the large number of people who travel the 75 mile distance from London for weekends and holidays. We spent a long time walking around the village and wandering through its shops. The town also has a large sailing club and there are always races off the coastline.

I was able to buy some sail makers whipping twine (used to repair torn sails) which I will attempt to use to repair my damaged suitcase when I get back to London.

When I travelled around England in 1991 I took over 150 photos of Inn signs and have stated doing the same this time. I have started a category for them on my flickr page.

From there we travelled back to Cliffs End passing the Kent International Airport at Manston. It caters for a lot of charter and budget flight to Europe and the USA. Real cheap holiday packages are offered by the charter companies at this airport to destinations including Majorca, Gran Canarias, Madeira, Sorrento, Croatia Malta and Jersey.