Dungeness
In the county of Kent, in the south-east of England, there is a small fishing village which you don't see very often in the tourist leaflets. Before the nineteen sixties it was just a handful of cottages and a lighthouse. Before the twenties it didn't have any paths or roads. Three hundred years ago it was just a small island.
Dungeness is the name of the place, although people sometimes call it 'the land that God never finished'. The land is completely flat and the only plants you can see are clumps of sea cabbage which grow up as far as your ankles. This is because the ground is all shingle, that is, small stones or pebbles. A few centuries ago there was one of the worst storms in history and it changed the course of a river. Instead of reaching the sea at Romney it now did so at Rye. The old river started to fill up with stones and sand, and it soon became permanently linked to the rest of the mainland.
Believe it or not, the Southern Railway company still thought it was a good idea to build a railway line out to a place with just a few hundred people in it. This was because they could dig up the stones and use it as ballast on their railways. The result was the unusual image of a railway station in the middle of nowhere. Then the miniature Romney Hythe and Dymchurch railway (the one I wrote about last week) came there and after that a lot of tourists came along.
At one stage there was a plan to build a channel tunnel at Dungeness, but in the end Dover was chosen for the project. What changed the landscape more than anything else though was the building of two enormous nuclear power stations. These always have to be near the sea or a river (to cool the reactors) and the public prefer it if they are also a long way from large cities. The result is you can travel across a few kilometres of Britain's only desert landscape with nothing but flat land around you and then find yourself next to a busy centre of industry. People have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it isn't as beautiful as it had been before the power station came. On the other hand, it provides a lot of current for the electricity-hungry south-east.
Dungeness is another of those places I would recommend to tourists which you probably won't hear about in the guide books. Take the first train of the day on the RHDR, then go over to the power station where there is a visitors' centre. All nuclear power stations seem to have visitors' centres nowadays (Sellafield's was once the top tourist attraction in the country for one year). Then, if you are feeling energetic and aren't scared of heights, climb up the old lighthouse. It's a long way up but the views from the top are magnificent. There's a new, automatic, lighthouse next to it. They built the new one because the ships could no longer see the old one, as someone had built a power station in the way of the light.
Glossary
a leaflet ulotka
a clump kępa
an ankle kostka
permanently na stałe
a lighthouse latarnia morska
Here are some things that fishermen would find useful:
E B B R M R C V B V E M U Y A I T E B C
F N W I N C H S H I F W U K J G E C D N
J N I Y G C T X I Z A X H F A Z K G K Q
V W F H L Y W B I W P N W D H J C V X I
N U X U C V A A Z P N K O O H S A C A Z
K B F V A A X I A K M E J C J X J M J D
C M S C N M M T B H P N H U Q A E E G G
M H R A I L I E P A I E U E H Z F T Y N
Z W P T V Z N U C A A T M Y C A I I S F
R R Y B U R J Y G I B L H O I J L P T Q
D M N F O C X R Y P N O A E S I W V S I
M B H H C R B V F Q O W P I N N P N M Z
Y K G E A N S F O O R P R E T A W U X D
L O O G M S Z J F L E Z B E S A K W S O
F W W Z E Z U I X V M W Q T O H O R X M
R S Y R W A G O W B B J C T H I N B T O
M A W W E X N U W M V Y J J J E J N E S
B F D R F W D C R O L P G S F S W F N C
J K P I J M M D G D Z Q S A J Q N N L X
L X D V O B Z D E X W O Z W J G K B R B
KEY
net
bait
line
ice machine
hook
boat
winch
fog horn
radio
life jacket
waterproofs
People who are scared of heights have 'vertigo'.
Most fears, on the other hand, have the word 'phobia' in them. If a person has one of these phobias, what are they scared of?
- hydrophobia
- photophobia
- cynophobia
- triskadekaphobia
KEY
- fear of water
- fear of light
- fear of dogs
- fear of the number thirteen