‘It’s a Marmite place, you either love it or hate it,” says the lady making us coffee at Ness Café, as we gaze across the flat, arid landscape that is Dungeness beach, a chunk of Arizona on the Kent coast. Certainly it’s not for everyone. Some find it too bleak, depressing even. Others lean into it, the endless stretch of shingle and the looming presence of a nuclear power station at the southern end that lends a distinctly apocalyptic feel. Throw in the surreal afterthought of a miniature railway that runs across the beach and there really is nowhere else quite like it.
The place has long been an inspiration for artists, photographers, architects and writers, drawn by the otherworldly atmosphere, the strange clash of styles and the shifting blue-grey light.
It drew me a couple of years ago, when I decided it would make a great setting for a key scene in my psychological thriller. My two main characters end up at the Metropole, an entirely fictional hotel that I wish existed: a forlorn art-deco gem crouching on the shore near the lighthouse. As the fog sets in, a mysterious widower confesses more than he should to his ghostwriter about the mysterious circumstances of his wife’s death. It felt like the right place to dial up the romantic suspense.
Our brief stay is distinctly less gothic. We start with lunch at the Dungeness Snack Shack on the beach: fat juicy prawns, fried fish in flatbread, red cabbage slaw, fried potatoes (nothing so obvious as chips here), scallops and halloumi taste sublime in the sea air, even more so at less than a tenner a head.
We walk past the mishmash of cottages and cabins – everywhere you look it’s Martin Parr meets Architectural Digest; next to the bright green bungalow with a St George flag and washing line out front, there’s a black, midcentury cube with floor-to-ceiling glass.
Found objects, pebble sculptures, piles of fishing nets, rusting machinery and boats abandoned far from sea all add to a sense of mystery; what has been left to gently decay, and what has been lovingly curated?
We head to the Pilot Inn for a pint, its retro pine-clad interior already packed by 6pm with locals tucking into generous portions of fish and chips, “the best in England”, according to the late filmmaker Derek Jarman, whose rustic former home, Prospect Cottage, overlooks the beach.
As we walk across the shingle, the rolling fog I imagined in my book puts in an appearance. Ahead of us is the flashing beam of the lighthouse shrouded in sea mist. We follow the straight line of the miniature railway track, slightly spooked by the eerie whistling sound and a low hum from the nuclear power station.
We make it back across the marshland to our home for the night, West Cottage, one of two former lighthouse keepers’ homes, at the foot of the original Dungeness lighthouse which was built in the 18th century.
Like most of the properties around here, there’s an interesting history. West Cottage, dating back to 1843, was bought by artist, sculptor and photographer Martin Turner in the 1990s. When his daughter, Kathryn, inherited it, she embarked on a meticulous renovation. There are lovely touches throughout the house, from the reclaimed floorboards to the brass taps and the striking Spanish floor tiles in the kitchen and bathroom. We cook a meal and cosy up for the evening with a roaring wood-burning stove.
The next day, we pack up and head to Camber Sands. Less than 20 minutes along the coast it could be a different state, like leaving Arizona for the Hamptons. Here the coastline softens, the sea is bluer, the surf whiter and the shingle turns to swirls of creamy sand dunes, overlooked by pretty clapboard houses.
Just nearby is Harry’s, a restaurant that opened a few months ago and is part of the Gallivant, a boutique hotel a few yards from the beach.
A pretty, conservatory-style dining room with white wicker chairs and walls lined with framed vintage swimwear looks out on to a small courtyard. The lunch menu feels like good value at £29 for two courses, but we’ve worked up an appetite after a walk on the beach and opt for three courses at £35.
With ex-Bibendum chef Matthew Harris as lead chef here, we can’t resist the Maldon oysters, suitably elemental with a zing of sauce mignonette (vinegar, minced shallots and pepper). The local fish – hake today – caught from Rye Bay is the perfect foil to the anise of the fennel and spiced red cabbage purée.
There’s also an impressive range of English wines on the menu including a crisp, dry East Sussex sparkling white from Oxney Organic Estate. The highlight is sharing an old-school Armagnac prune crème brûlée and vanilla ice-cream served as it should be, in a silver coupe with chocolate sauce to pour over.
Before we leave, we walk into Rye and its picture-perfect Mermaid Street, a steep incline of cobbled lanes and half-timbered houses. It’s undeniably pretty, but for me it doesn’t quite pass the Marmite test. Give me the ghostly fog and bleak desolation of Dungeness any day.
West Cottage sleeps four in two bedrooms and is available from £981 for five nights. For more details, go to bloomstays.com.
Emma Cook’s novel You Can’t Hurt Me is out now in paperback and is published by Orion at £10.99. Buy it for £9.89 at guardianbookshop.com
