Reculver

Not a great day. We wanted to look at historical sites near the coast between Sandwich and Margate. It really is a horrible stretch of coast - built up and done in such a way as to maximise its ugliness and destroy any sense of natural beauty that might once have existed.

Sandwich was a nice enough medieval town, but it needed closing off to traffic. We saw St Mary's church and St Peter's church there - both interesting but not that exciting. Then we drove up towards Ramsgate to see St Augustine's Cross - a 19th century replica of a Saxon cross that marks where St Augustine landed by sitting in a neglected, litter-strewn patch of grass between a golf course and a lay-by. Nearby was Hugin - a replica Viking longship sailed from Denmark to Kent in 1949 and then given to the towns of Ramsgate and Broadstairs by the Daily Mail. It sits behind a high metal fence, next to a main road and a depressing picnic area on the edge of Cliffsend, a grim modern suburban village. From here, onto Reculver. This is another Roman site, of similar age to Richborough, but almost nothing Roman is visible. Instead, you can see the imposing twin towers of a 12th century church. Except, it isn't 12 century. When the towers followed the rest of the building into ruin, they were rebuilt in 1819 purely because they were useful as coastal navigation aids. They stand above Reculver Country Park, a wide expanse of post-industrial brownfield misery and futile concrete sea defences.

To cap all this off, the weather was dreadful for taking photos - all washed out and overcast. Bright enough to back-light everything horribly, not bright enough to cast any clear illumination. This photo, of the church at Reculver, was the only half-decent one of the day.