Hidden Gem in Kent

Botany Bay is one of the finest and most dramatically set beaches on the north Kent coast near Broadstairs, a bay enclosed between chalk stacks and arches whose combination of the brilliant white chalk formations, the sandy beach and the rock pools at low tide creates one of the most characterful beach environments in the southeast. The beach is backed by chalk cliffs of considerable height and the stacks standing in the sea at each end of the bay have been sculpted by wave erosion into the arched and undercut forms characteristic of the chalk coast of this section of Kent. The chalk stack at the western end of the bay is the most impressive natural feature, its arch and undercut base demonstrating the wave erosion that has progressively separated this mass of chalk from the cliff behind. The rock pools exposed at low tide contain a rich community of marine invertebrates in the clear, relatively uncontaminated water of this section of the North Sea coast, and the beach is popular with fossil hunters who find shark teeth, sea urchins and other marine fossils weathering from the chalk in the cliff faces. The beach is reached by steps from the clifftop above and the relative inaccessibility compared with the more developed Broadstairs beaches nearby preserves a quality of discovery and natural character that makes Botany Bay one of the most rewarding beach experiences on the north Kent coast. The coast path connecting Botany Bay with Kingsgate Bay and North Foreland provides excellent chalk cliff walking with extensive Channel views.

Dungeness in Kent is one of the largest expanses of shingle beach in the world, a flat and extraordinary landscape of shin-deep flint pebbles extending across the low-lying headland at the southeastern corner of England in a scene of industrial, natural and architectural strangeness quite unlike any other place in Britain. The combination of the nuclear power station, the two lighthouses, the scattered beach community of black-tarred fishermen's huts and converted railway carriages, the Derek Jarman garden and the RSPB nature reserve creates a landscape of remarkable and entirely unique character. The shingle habitat of Dungeness supports one of the most diverse communities of plants and invertebrates of any shingle system in Britain, the open shingle providing niches for rare plants adapted to the extreme conditions of high solar radiation, minimal water retention and the instability of the substrate. The RSPB reserve on the northern edge of the headland provides internationally important habitats for breeding birds including common tern, great crested grebe, bittern and a wide variety of wildfowl in the lagoons and pools. Derek Jarman, the filmmaker and artist who lived at Prospect Cottage on the Dungeness headland from 1987 until his death in 1994, created a garden from the shingle surrounding his cottage using locally gathered driftwood, stones and plants adapted to the shingle conditions. The cottage and garden, painted black against the shingle, have become one of the most celebrated artist's homes in Britain and the garden continues to be maintained as a memorial to its creator.