Romney Marsh - Land of the Strange
Just back from a trip to Romney Marsh in Kent. It's near London but another world - the tip of it, Dungeness, is best known as the site of Derek Jarman's garden but is home to a whole isolated community of fisherman's shacks, makeshift homes and a tiny, sinister chapel, living on a shingle penisula with the hum of the nuclear power station. It's made even weirder by the fact that you get there on a miniature but fully working steam train, which takes you through the marshes past a lot of caravans and some 1920s sound mirrors out on to the shingle.
Romney Marsh is also used by the army for firing practice, so you come across one street built in the middle of deserted countryside. Malaria wiped out a large proportion of the population in the 19th century, particularly the women – hence the huge churches now serving tiny villages.
