Dungeness

The shingle crunches underfoot for miles, flat and featureless until the shapes emerge: fishing huts tarred black, a nuclear power station humming on the horizon, Derek Jarman's garden blooming against all odds. Dungeness in Kent occupies the largest shingle expanse in Europe, a landscape so stark it resets your sense of what England can look like.

Designated as Britain's only desert by some geographers, Dungeness sits at the tip of Romney Marsh where the English Channel meets the North Sea. The two lighthouses — one Victorian, one decommissioned and open to climbers — mark the point where the shingle spit continues to grow seaward. The RSPB reserve attracts migrating birds that use the gravel pits as staging posts, while the miniature Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway runs along the coast behind. Jarman's Prospect Cottage, preserved since his death in 1994, has become an unofficial pilgrimage site for artists and gardeners drawn to its defiant beauty. Beyond the cottage, the RSPB reserve conceals three concrete acoustic mirrors — parabolic reflectors built between 1928 and 1935 to detect the sound of approaching enemy aircraft. The invention of radar made them instantly obsolete. The largest, a 60-metre curved wall, stands in the shingle like a relic of an abandoned civilisation, accessible only on guided walks.