Rye; Friday, 17 September, 2021

I’d travelled down to Ashford the day before so had been working out of a hotel there in the morning as I had a half days leave booked.

Once I’d finished work for the morning I packed up my things, checked out of the hotel and headed over to the station to catch the train on to Rye. From the station in Rye I walked the short distance to my hotel and was able to checkin early and drop my bags off.

I headed out into town to have a bit of a wander, taking in Mermaid Street – reportedly one of the most instagramed streets in Britain, and the rest of the historic town centre, including the Land gate and some of the look out points. Rye itself is built on the top of a rocky outcrop that stands over the Romney Marsh. Less than 800 years ago when the town built its walls and gates it was protected on three sides by the sea, but as the harbour silted up and the seas retreated the town now finds itself on a high position looking over the marsh, with the sea now some three miles away from the town.

Having taken in the town centre I headed down to the station and, after a quick late lunch from the local supermarket, picked up The Wave bus out into the Romney Marshes – through Camber Sands across the county border and the town Lydd and onto the edge of Kent on the coast at Dungeness and Lydd-on-Sea. Here the wide shingle beach, low rise houses that just line one side of the street, abandoned fishing machinery of years past and the wide skies make it unlike anywhere else in Britain. I spent a bit of time wandering around the beach area before hopping on a bus a couple of miles up the coast to the neighbouring town of Greatstone-on-Sea.

From the beach at Greatsone I headed in land a little to the RSPB nature reserve and followed the path round to one of the weirder constructions on an already weird bit of the coast – the Denge Sound Mirrors.

Before Radar was perfected the RAF, scientists and engineers had worked out that from the sound of a planes engines they could detect the direction it was coming from and even some rudimentary idea of it’s speed – but they needed a way of amplifying the noise. And this is where the Sound Mirrors step in.

Several large concrete constructions in the middle of the Romney Marsh, their concave faces looking out towards the continent and where any enemy planes may come from – they worked and for a number of years they would prove to be at the forefront of technology, but even before WWII broke out Radar was replacing them, so they saw little front line action, and instead faded into obscurity. Today they just sit in the middle of the nature reserve – an unnerving sight for someone who stumbles across them without knowledge of what they are.

Today you can’t actually go onto the island where the mirrors are located, but you can get a good look at them from across the short stretch of water that separates them from the rest of the nature reserve. Having taken in the mirrors I headed back to the main road and caught the bus back down to Lydd-on-Sea and then had a wander on down into Dungeness itself taking in the eiry quiet of this place.

I spent a bit of time wandering around Dungeness before I headed back to the bus stop and caught the bus back into Rye for a quick freshen up in the hotel before heading out for dinner.

After dinner I wandered back through the town in the dark, taking some night photos of the centre of Rye before heading back to the hotel and turning in for the night.