The title may ring a bell if you grew up on a literary diet of Enid Blyton. In fact we were four as our fifth had a knee injury and we didn’t have Timmy, the dog in the Famous Five series.
We took the high-speed connection to Ashford International and then made more leisurely progress to Margate. While the attractions of Margate are limited (no Crazy Golf, surely a prerequisite of a seaside resort) there are three things you shouldn’t miss. It’s easy to miss two of them; the sun rising over Dreamland, posing a contrapunctus evoking “to sleep perchance to dream” and ” awake, dear heart, awake” and Anthony Gormley’s sculpture Another Time XXI, 2013.
I was not in Margate at sunrise and when I arrived the tide had submerged Gormley’s statue. This is what I saw. So thank you Paddy for getting up early.
The third must-see is the Turner Contemporary. Actually you can’t miss it.
For such a big gallery it has rather little in it. If you are expecting to see some Turners they have five tucked away and seem almost ashamed of them, although in the middle of the 19th century Turner was pushing out more boundaries than Tracy Emin ever has. We did see a temporary exhibition of sculpture and paintings. The latter attracted our interest if not our admiration.
But, as Jack Aubrey was fond of saying, we must crack on. It is only about five miles around the coast to Broadstairs and there are super sea views for most of the way and matters of ornithological, geological and historical interest. The literary highlight is John Buchan’s thirty-nine steps but they have been blocked up and we missed the entrance.
Broadstairs seemed a cut above Margate, especially architecturally. A fishy lunch at Wyatt & Jones was excellent; as good as anywhere in the country and fairly priced. (One of us had five courses.)
What greedy friends you have.