As a travel writer, if I ever want to disgust friends and alienate strangers, I can reel off a long list of thrilling summers spent around the globe. But the summer that shines brightest saw me closer to home. Last May, after three years of near-constant travelling for work, punctuated by brief spells in my flat in east London, I took a short assignment in the Kentish seaside town of Margate. And something happened to me, something I’ve half-expected on every single work trip I ever set off on. Margate stopped feeling like a travel story, and started feeling like a place I could call home.
I spent my weekend in Margate grilling residents old and new. I asked about their favourite spots and their reasons for moving to the town – and gratefully accepted generous invitations to beach picnics, gallery openings and swims in the sea. I boarded the train back to St Pancras completely seduced by this seaside town, and a few weeks later, I’d moved out of my overpriced London flat and into a place looking out over the sea.
And so began the best summer of my life. My first Monday morning in Margate, I woke up at 6am out of sheer excitement, saw the sunshine outside and hopped on my bike to wind my way around the Kent coastline to Ramsgate. In London, a 45-minute cycle took me from Walthamstow to Clerkenwell, through industrial estates and along fume-choked streets. Here it took me past white cliffs, melodramatic cliff-hugging castles, country pubs and increasingly deserted sandy beaches. I was at my laptop and working by 9am, but I’d already had an adventure before breakfast.
One fuzzy Sunday morning, dared by my friends, I leapt into Margate’s Grade II listed tidal pool. I’d hoped for nothing more than a hangover cure; I found a life-changing habit. My morning routine became a sprint along the beach followed by a refreshing few lengths in the pool. During my swims at Walpole Bay, I became fascinated by the demographic soup I was now a part of: along with the growing community of Londoners, like me, who’d ditched the city for the seaside, I’d meet Polish grandmothers, Nigerian families and Romany teenagers.
There’s no greater social leveller than cold water; stripped of our clothing and other social props, we’re all reduced to small, shivering, fragile humans. As one Polish grandmother said to me: “We are all sea friends here.”
I guess there’s a delicious irony in it being a resort town that finally persuaded me to settle down, because Margate is a place where every day feels like a holiday. I’ve learned that a lot of the things I thought I had to travel abroad for – sunny afternoons, salty plunges in the sea, the simpler routine of life in a small town – can be found here in Britain. And after years of non-stop travel, nothing seems more exotic to me than familiarity; knowing my postman by name, volunteering in the local charity shop and putting down roots. Last summer, hanging up my rucksack and settling down with Margate, was the greatest adventure I’ve had in years.
Anna Hart is a travel writer and author, whose first travel book, Departures, will be published by Little, Brown and Company in January 2018.
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