In Roman times, what is now the southernmost part of Kent was submerged beneath the English Channel. The lowering of the sea levels in the Middle Ages and later reclamation created a forty-square-mile area of shingle and marshland, the Romney and Denge marshes, which today is populated mainly by sheep and has an eerie, forlorn appearance.

You can take in the marshes on the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway, a fifteen-inch-gauge line which runs between Dungeness and the ancient town of Hythe on the marsh’s western edge.