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Real Kent stretches South of the Thames from the English
Channel to the River Ravensbourne and includes the London Boroughs of Lewisham,
Greenwich, Bexley and Bromley as well as the area administered by Kent County
Council, and the towns of Gillingham and Rochester.
The north west of the County is in effect urban South-East
London. The Millennium Dome is
actually on Kentish soil, lying as it does within the borough of Greenwich,
and it is interesting that the station here has been named North Greenwich,
as originally this term referred to an area on the other side of the River
Thames; indeed there was once a North Greenwich station on the North side.
Kent alongside the Thames is a mixture of new developments such as
Thamesmead, windswept marshes, industrial areas which include the great
maritime tradition of Chatham Dockyard, where most of Britain’s Navy was
built. The islands of Sheppey and
Grain are mostly lonely places now, although the eastern end of the latter
houses a large oil refinery.
The best-known icon of Kent is, of course, the White Cliffs of Dover: many an
Englishman has been glad to spot them as his ferry sails back home from
France! But nowadays not everyone
sees these cliffs, as a great number of people whoosh back home from France
or Belgium aboard a Eurostar express train many feet below the sea.
The Kentish coast is of great interest, from the pleasure resort of Margate
right round to the loneliness of Romney Marsh, where breed a large species of
frog not otherwise known in Britain.
But the one product always associated with the County of Kent is its
hops, grown for the production of beer.
Don’t miss Canterbury with all its history, or the Roman remains at
Lullingstone or Rochester. But,
behind and beyond all these populous places, there is a quiet world of lovely
villages, usually with an ancient church and a real pub, where the beer is of
the finest in England.
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