Broadstairs
Broadstairs is a small seaside town on the Isle of Thanet in Kent that has maintained its Victorian resort character more successfully than most of the southeast's coastal towns, its compact cliff-top streets, Victorian villas and the intimate Viking Bay below the town creating an atmosphere that retains genuine seaside charm without the tattiness that has overtaken some of its larger neighbours. The town is particularly associated with Charles Dickens, who spent many working holidays at Broadstairs between the 1830s and 1850s and wrote some of his most celebrated novels while staying in the town, and the annual Dickens Festival celebrates this connection with considerable enthusiasm.
Bleak House, the cliff-top house now known as Dickens House where the novelist did much of his writing, is a distinctive feature of the Broadstairs cliff line and provides the most immediate visual reminder of the Dickens connection. The Dickens House Museum in the town covers the writer's association with Broadstairs in depth and provides context for the various locations around the town associated with his visits and his work. Dickens described Broadstairs as our English Watering Place in an essay of that title and his affection for the town was genuine and sustained, making the association one of the most authentic in English literary heritage.
Viking Bay, the main beach at Broadstairs, is a sheltered, sandy cove below the cliff-face of the town, its compact scale and excellent sand making it one of the most popular beaches in Thanet. The beach is overlooked by the buildings of the town above, creating an enclosed and intimate beach environment quite different from the long, open beaches elsewhere in Kent. The chalk cliffs on either side of the bay and the coastal walking available between Broadstairs and the neighbouring towns of Margate and Ramsgate add a wider coastal dimension.
The town also celebrates a Dickens Week each year and holds a Folk and Acoustic Festival with a well-established reputation in the UK festival calendar.