Introduction
We took a family holiday to Deal in Kent.
Saturday
We had chosen the location partly for its easy train journey, but due to a rail strike, they weren’t actually running trains to Deal. We had to go to Ramsgate and get a taxi.
I had incorrectly assumed the second part of that would be expensive but easy, but the regional taxi company’s app (and phone line) said ‘no drivers available’. Your entire company is about having drivers available, that's what you do! I hate Uber but we tried that and it wasn't any better. We were starting to panic, but after 25 minutes an oldschool taxi thankfully showed up at the station car park.
It rained all day and we had to hurry to the supermarket to get food as soon as we arrived, so I didn’t take pictures.
Sunday
We were staying in a nice, rather large and tall house in the old part of town near the sea (where all the smuggling allegedly went on).
Our three-year-old had never seen the sea before.
Deal has a pier, with a fancy and busy café at the end. I liked the food, R didn’t, and Adam very much didn’t like how long we had to wait for it!
We visited the Deal Museum in the afternoon. It’s a very nice little museum, worth seeing.
Monday
Obviously we spent some more time on the beach.
Deal Castle is quite large and well-preserved. The above-ground part has a museum which was generally not interesting enough for a toddler. There is also a very large below-ground area (where they used to keep supplies, gunpowder, etc.), which I thought was great - but the darker parts are, allegedly, too scary.
After the castle we went back along the seafront.
I popped out on my own in the evening, just for a few minutes.
Tuesday
Wednesday
For our child’s first beach holiday, of course we took great care to choose a suitable location. So we didn’t know that the beaches were all shingle. Great for throwing stones into the sea, less great for making sandcastles.
Feeling slightly guilty about this, we took a train to nearby Broadstairs to visit a very busy sandy beach for the day.
Thursday
We took a short walk north along the seaside to Sandown, where there used to be another castle (no sign of it now). The castles here were built to defend the area (which was strategically important as a safe place for ships to anchor) against the French, but only ever saw action in the Civil War.
In the afternoon we went to the Timeball Tower museum, which is really great. It used to show the time to ships anchored nearby because the ball on top went up, and then dropped down, at 1pm. (Now they do it every hour when the museum’s open.) They have a top quality 1980s video explanation, lots of other displays, and you can punch the time on your entry ticket with an old clocking-in machine.
In the evening, on the beach, we saw the local rowing club practicing.
Friday
We visited the local film museum; Adam was grumpy and unimpressed, even though they did have picture books and other stuff. For adults it was fairly interesting. It‘s in a normal-looking house on a residential street.
Adam and I went out on the pier again, and then the beach some more.
That’s the end of our trip - our first proper holiday (except visiting relatives) for years! Deal is actually a nice place to visit although you have to plan a bit - ideally, better than us - because the museums and shops tend to open only a few days each week, even in summer season. And there are lots of cafés but, inexplicably, only one nice tearoom.
