Actually that is a lie. Dungeness is not England’s only desert. Google will tell you it is. Countless articles online will tell you it is, but if you dig a little deeper you will see it’s an urban myth. A story started by the landlord of the pub in Dungeness who wanted to start a rumour to see if it would gain traction.
If you have ever visited the area you will see why people would think it was true. It certainly looks like a desert when you arrive. There is barely any rainfall and it is hard for anything to grow. There are no trees for instance. Yet despite various website saying even the Met Office has designated it as a desert, it isnt. That would mean that every year less than 250mm of rain fell and there would be huge temperature differences between daytime and nighttime. So next time you hear somebody proclaim it to be our only desert, you can go all QI Klaxon and say it isn’t.
So what is it?
Well it is home to the Dungeness Power Station, though the current owners EDF Energy are in the process of dismantling it. This leads to an area known as “the boil” where water is discharged from the power station into the sea, enriching the local biodiversity and attracting seabirds from miles around. The power station sits in a corner of the area and before we arrived I thought it would dominate the landscape but actually it doesn’t at all. There are also two pubs, both serving local fish, and four, yes four lighthouses.
The area is Marmite, many a Redditor says they hate it and find it depressing and bleak, whilst many others find it fascinating and love it. It is also the backdrop to many a music video and was the inspiration for Ed Sheeran’s song about England (he bought a house there and wrote a whole album).
Me? I loved it. There is a stillness to it that I adore. A calmness that comes from it literally being on the edge of the world and it not be a through road. You don’t drive through on the way to somewhere else when you come here, this IS the destination. For many people it is because this is where the playwright Derek Jarman’s famous Prospect Cottage sits, and that you are free to explore in the garden. For others it’s a spot to stay as some of the buildings are now AirBnBs. For us it was a weekend away, staying just out of town, having a reset amongst the dunes photographing sunrises and sunsets and falling in love with a slower pace for 48 hours.
You should go. I think you’d like it