Motorhome travel: Hiring a motorhome around Kent

Over the years, we had driven through Kent by car, been taken across Kent by coach and been whisked by Kent on the high-speed railway, always on the way to the Continent. I had an appetite to pause a while in Kent, whetted when returning from events at Brands Hatch racing circuit and taking the picturesque route home. My wife, Christine, said she would very much like to visit Sissinghurst Castle Garden. Neither of us had ever been to Canterbury and I had hankered after a trip on the Romney Hythe and Dymchurch Railway (RH&DR) since I was a small boy. So, Kent was the choice for our second trip trying different types of motorhome. 

This time we decided to ‘go large’ and hired a Tribute T-715, very spacious for two. We stayed at the quiet and pleasantly landscaped Camping and Caravanning Club site just outside Canterbury and, next day, took the bus from the bus stop very close by to get into the city centre. Canterbury was buzzing with tourists as we enjoyed an al fresco coffee in the traffic-free shopping area, before walking across to the cathedral. As you walk through the old part of the city centre, Canterbury Cathedral hides behind a range of high street shops pierced only by an entrance arch with a stunning statue of Christ above it; a statue not to everyone’s taste and dating from the restoration of 1932.

Through the arch, as the vista widens, there the cathedral is in all its glory. It’s a magnificent building of many phases built over the centuries and it’s a World Heritage Site. The cathedral is the seat of the Archbishop and is mother church to the worldwide Anglican Communion, a place of worship for over 1,400 years. The evolution of the cathedral building over the centuries is fascinating and illustrated on a large plan displayed in the old quadrangle that used to be part of the Benedictine community on the site. There are guided tours, but we chose just to follow the route in the guidebook. There is plenty to absorb, but the weight of history feels almost tangible when you stand at the actual spot where Archbishop Thomas Becket was murdered.

Shortly after this event in the late twelfth century, Canterbury became a place of pilgrimage and this continues to the present day. The route continues past the ‘corona’ at the east end that was built in the twelfth century to contain a shrine to Thomas. We were deeply moved as we looked through a book on display summarising the lives of recent martyrs around the world – martyrs of living memory.

Just a stone’s throw away on St Margaret’s Street, The Canterbury Tales is altogether different and quite a contrast. It is an audio-visual version of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales that involves walking through a series of stage-like dioramas. We were treated to five of the better-known tales including The Miller’s Tale, The Wife of Bath’s Tale and The Priest’s Tale. Maybe it was a bit tacky, but it was quite good fun, especially the room giving an idea of the grim hotel accommodation enjoyed by the ordinary pilgrim in those days. The luxury of our spacious motorhome was even more appreciated when we returned!

Canterbury oozes with history; east of the cathedral is the oldest church in England still in use. St Martin’s can be traced back to Roman times, with fragments of Roman bricks and tiles in its walls. Walking back to the bus station by the city walls we found ourselves on the Roman road of Watling Street. Having an interest in railway history, we headed for the Romney Marshes and Daleacres club site.

Lympne Castle, now a hotel and wedding venue, looks down from the steep southern edge of the North Downs about a mile away across the fields. At Daleacres we clocked up our fifth club site, so we had begun to feel a little less like beginners. The Romney Hythe & Dymchurch Railway is a mainline railway in miniature with steam engines modelled on the mid-twentieth century locomotives of the London to Edinburgh line. It stretches 13 miles across Romney Marsh between Hythe and Dungeness and was built in the 1920s to indulge the dreams of two wealthy men, Captain JEP Howey and Count Louis Zborowski. The track gauge is just 15 inches and the engines built to one-third scale; they are not only pretty, but also pretty powerful as well.

We left the ’van in the car park at New Romney station and bought day rover tickets covering the whole line. The trains are quite narrow but they make up for that in length and, from a distance, they really could be mistaken for the real thing. After a cautious start, speed increased until we were bowling along at express speed – actually about 20mph! Disappointingly, a lot of this stretch of line hides behind the gardens of the properties along the seafront road. Whilst these get a terrific view of the Dover Straits, the sea and the wider landscape is hidden from the train.

But, when we emerged from this ‘cutting’, the view widened out – and what an alien landscape greeted us. Dungeness is a unique environment. It’s a huge shingle promontory jutting into the English Channel, the largest area of shingle in Britain. There is little vegetation and it has been described as Britain’s only desert. There are no trees and few buildings; the nearby nuclear power station and two lighthouses excepted! Dungeness is a fragile habitat, but is home to a range of low-growing flora, including protected species, many not found anywhere else in the UK.

Seen as a whole with the Romney Marshes, which are protected by this unusual beach, the area contains a wide range of habitats and conditions from near desert to wetland and saltmarsh. It is a Site of Special Scientific Interest – a little chastening when you think you just came for a ride on a steam train. Unlike the single line section to Dungeness, the rest of the railway is double track so, beyond New Romney, you get the thrill of meeting trains going at speed the other way. The character of the land changes completely. Here the marshes have been reclaimed for agriculture and we rattled along through the fields and roared across innumerable iron bridges with flashes of water below.

Slowing down into Hythe station is like arriving at a miniaturised city terminus. We walked the short distance into town through the park alongside the Royal Military Canal and headed to the beach. It is a steep shingle beach, but lovely to sit on and watch the Dover ferries in the distance. The little trains are a great way to explore this area. The roads up to Tanner Farm Park, just north of Goudhurst, were variously busy, slow, more hilly and sometimes a little narrow, but always two-way.

This is a very pleasant and peaceful campsite in the Kent Weald and close to our target for the next day – the glorious Sissinghurst Castle Garden. Not really a castle, despite having a high tower, it was the home of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson and the garden they created here still influences garden design today. Nicolson provided the architectural inspiration and divided the area between the long manor house and tower into separate ‘garden rooms’. Sackville-West inspired the planting, with individual themes for each area; that of the White Garden being accessible to even the least garden-literate of us. To wander around and between the ‘rooms’ is a delight and, because of the way the garden is structured, remains a very personal experience even when there are other visitors around.

Sissinghurst became a ‘castle’ when French sailors were held here as prisoners of war in the eighteenth century. The near-derelict site was purchased in the 1930s and the garden laid out and developed over the ensuing years, first opening to the public in 1938. Since 1967, Sissinghurst has been in the care of the National Trust. As you walk around the garden, the Elizabethan tower is ever present – rising above a wall or peeping over the bushes – and contains an exhibition of the development of the gardens and Vita Sackville-West’s study. Climb to the top and you are rewarded with panoramic views across the Weald and its colourful farmland where the ingredients for the restaurant grow. On our way to enjoy the home-grown produce, we walked through the orchard and along the moat. Whilst still close to the house and the tower, this is a much more open area and we sat in the shade of the summer house to enjoy the view. So, five varied and memorable days came to a close.

This feature was originally published in the April 2018 issue of MMM magazine. Want to read more like it? Subscribe to MMM magazine today for your monthly dose of motorhome travel inspiration.