We might live in a small country, but it’s amazing the huge variety of landscapes Britain manages to pack in. When we first travelled to the South Coast from Norfolk, I loved the winding roads, the hills, the woods and the green-ness, (although I’m suspect the locals trying to get to the M25 curse those winding roads!) But you don’t have to travel very far along the coast to find an altogether different landscape, wild, harsh, mysterious and beautiful.

I’ve wanted to visit Dungeness for a long time, especially once I had heard about Derek Jarman, and his garden, so I was very excited to find we had a trip organised, with steam trains!

I took lots of photos, so I’ll mainly let them do the talking. I hope they give you a flavour of  what a magical place it is.

We’ll get the nuclear power station out of the way first!

Prospect Cottage, Derek Jarman’s home…

It’s privately owned, so you can’t go in the garden, but just stand rather conspicuously on the road with your camera!

I wasn’t quite close enough to for the poem on the end wall to show up, but if you love poetry, you can find it here.

It’s incredible how anything can grow here, and the wonder of the garden is how attuned it is to the landscape.  For every gardener who has desperately tried to grow something tropical in a cold windy garden this is a triumph of going along with nature, finding what grows naturally, and mixing it with driftwood, rusty metal and flints and stones, and without boundary fences letting merge seamlessly into it’s surroundings…

Thomas bought me a wonderful book…

..which beautifully describes how the garden came about, with such fantastic photography it made my efforts seem a bit  feeble…(but it didn’t stop me from trying!)

It’s amazing what get’s washed up onto the shingle!

There are two lighthouses, the old one…

and because the shingle has built up over the years and made this one too far inland there is a shiny new one…

We walked down to the sea…

(We could still see the power station!)

There was a mysterious tumbledown building surrounded with rusty fences and barbed wire…

…and everywhere brave little plants doing their best to bloom in these harsh conditions…


…and we even found an Open Studio to visit…
Where the artist has a novel approach to recycling his paint brushes…

Then off to the train…

…where we had to make a difficult decision. Is Higgins…

a dog…or a bicycle?

Ummmm…..

 

The train ride was great, but noisy and Higgins wasn’t too impressed.

…and spent most of the journey with his head firmly wedged between our shoulders to block his ears!

I found a lovely little train I would have liked to bring home…

Such a pretty colour!

Phew, a long post, and there’s a certain amount of hovering going on which suggests it’s a mealtime, so I’d better sign off.

If you still haven’t seen enough, have a look at this great little blog….where you’ll find another Dungeness fan!

See you soon …x