Seaside fun for Goths?

[oursin]

I was a little startled to see, quite so high up in the chart of UK's best and worst seaside towns, Dungeness. Which isn't really even a town (Wikipedia describes it as a hamlet), more a sandspit at the end of the Romney Hythe and Dymchurch Light Railway, famed for lighthouses, shingle beaches, nature reserves, Derek Jarman's Prospect Cottage, and a decommissioned nuclear power station ('Long journey ahead' for nuclear plant clean-up).

[A] barren and bewitching backdrop for a getaway. A vast swathe of this shingle headland is designated a National Nature Reserve, cradling around a third of all British plant species, with some 600 having been recorded, from rugged sea kale to delicate orchids. Exposed to the Channel and loomed over by twin nuclear power stations, Dungeness has, over recent decades, become an unlikely enclave for artists and a popular spot for day-trippers, horticulturalists and birders alike.

Or even
The ghostly allure of Dungeness, Kent. It’s an arid and mysterious place, yet it’s precisely these charms that captivate visitors.

Looking at the criteria scored on, it really is rather weird: completely lacking in the hotels, shopping and seafront/pier categories and not much for tourist attractions but scores high on peace and quiet and scenery.

Perhaps there is a larger number of people looking for this kind of getaway experience, invoking a certain eerie folk-horror vibe, than one would suppose. Not really a Summer Skies and Golden Sands kind of experience, take it away, The Overlanders.

Surprised that somewhere like Margate didn't rate higher.

Comments

[keplers_angels]

I want to go for "Barren and bewitching" alone!

[ethelmay]

IT ME

[paulkincaid]

There's a pretty damned good pub there, The Pilot. Also, how many nuclear power stations have their own light railway station right on the doorstep?

[oursin]

Though when I had a temp typing job there in the late 60s during a university vacation, it was a bus to Hythe and a staff minibus out there, nothing so fun as the little train!

[regshoe]

It's a famous birding destination! And I think it's a bit funny describing it as 'barren' and 'arid' when a third of all British plant species are found there.

[oursin]

I think this has to do with concepts of 'nature' as not involving large stretches of shingle and having trees and bushes and so on, whereas Dungeness, like Norfolk, is Very Flat. (Except for the lighthouses.)

(Am now thinking of recent column seen about how lovely lush ground cover seen in some famed heritage location is actually Intrusive and eco-disaster.)