Ramsgate
is where I used to take my holidays as a child. But
that was a Ramsgate in Queensland, and another one which was virtually
a suburb of Sydney. Where I live now is Ramsgate on the Isle
of Thanet, Kent, UK. The population of Thanet is about a quarter of a million,
and it has the second-highest level of unemployment in England. Ramsgate
was with Margate one of the great seaside resorts in the last century,
with paddle steamers coming down from London for day trips, and several
railway links to London. It used to have a Hover port and more conventional
RORO ferries to France and Belgium, as well as a historically important
RAF base (RAF Manston), but almost all of that is now abandoned.
Charles Dickens once lived in nearby Broadstairs (there
is a thriving tourist trade based on re-naming almost everything in the
town after bits of his books). Edward Heath was born in Broadstairs.
Ramsgate was one of the chief embarkation points for the Dunkirk rescue,
as well as for the Napoleonic wars.
