‘It’s a Marmite place, you either love it or hate it,” says the lady making us coffee at Ness Café, as we gaze across the flat, arid landscape that is Dungeness beach, a chunk of Arizona on the Kent coast. Certainly it’s not for everyone. Some find it too bleak, depressing even. Others lean into it, the endless stretch of shingle and the looming presence of a nuclear power station at the southern end that lends a distinctly apocalyptic feel. Throw in the surreal afterthought of a miniature railway that runs across the beach and there really is nowhere else quite like it.
The place has long been an inspiration for artists, photographers, architects and writers, drawn by the otherworldly atmosphere, the strange clash of styles and the shifting blue-grey light.
