Medway towns guy as well… I work in Tunbridge Wells which does have some lovely places like @pervo says, I did enjoy being back in Margate for By The Sea this week and Ramsgate Music Hall is great as well.

I do miss my uni days up north though so I’ve said to myself I would like to move out of Kent before I’m 30, otherwise I’m worried I’ll just get stuck in Medway and regret it…

Would definitely be up for a Kent meet by the way.

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I had never been in a fight, or even confrontation, in my life until I moved there. There is a barracks there which doesn’t help, but also found the regular locals very fighty indeed and really didn’t take kindly to students and seemed to able to spot us a mile off.

Had a knife pulled on me once! A Stanley knife, but still.

Seems to have improved a lot though, and there are some amazing pubs there. As students we never really bothered with places like Ye Olde Thirsty Pig or the Flower Pot, in favour of the 'Spoons. Could have been a very different three years if we had…

Margate has a stench of death about it and has awful swewage/litter. Whitstable or broadstairs is much nicer in terms of cleanliness.

I toured the coast of Kent last Saturday. Covered Folkestone > Hythe > Dymchurch > Dungeness > Winchelsea > Rye > Hastings.

Highlight for me was roaming Dungeness beach with the power station in the background. I’d say Dungeness is my new favourite place. So desolate and post apocalyptic. The grey sky helped.

Wasn’t impressed with Folkestone’s premiere restaurant Rock Salt. Awful fish and chips.

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Margate/Kent sounds absolutely amazing, I must look into visiting there sometime very soon!

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Hello! Have you tried the Pantiles Tap yet @pervo? I was a bit slow realising that it was there. Lovely micro pub serving an enormous range of craft beers and ciders. Highly recommend it.

Who would have thought that a Margate thread would get a beef-free near 100 replies ? Not me

When I was in the Turner gallery it stank of wee and or poo.

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(I was the cause of neither)

Yes! My brother and his girlfriend went there and recommended it, so I had a cheeky half-pint of cider while waiting for other people to turn up to a Pokemon Go raid. (Cool, I know.) Keen to go back with friends at some point… not sure I’d have found it if not for word of mouth, it’s really tucked away around the corner (plus I rarely get to go to the Pantiles these days - I used to work in Union House, which apparently is being knocked down? - but haven’t worked there for a few years, and although I’m starting a new TW job in a few weeks, it’s in the RVP so wrong end of town :frowning: )

Yeah Medway’s full of aggro people too, but I find there it’s the sort of people you would stereotypically think would give you trouble- men who look like they’re in the National Front and so on, whereas in Maidstone it’s people in office clothes and mums with pushchairs and the like.

It’s the rotting seaweed. Also in one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes so all those giant ships on the horizon are probably dumping stuff too. It doesn’t always smell like that though luckily.

It didn’t stink outside though, just in the gallery, so it seemed like a problem with their sewage (I’m not sure if someone told us that or if it was a conclusion we’d reached).

No has mentioned that Margate is the next place to be, have they?

I grew up in the Medway towns and we always thought of Maidstone as posh. (Although I guess anywhere is posher than Medway despite some of the areas there being very wealthy.)

Once in Maidstone, a random woman tried to give me her baby and run away. Weirdly this also happened to my mum in the same place a few weeks later!

He’s recently got this lurid yellow car. You can’t miss him in it.

Actually the cafe he and his family run does very nice coffee and cake.

I think we think of Maidstone as posh because it has all the chain stores and a standard high street seems fancy to us.

When I left home and went to uni in Reading it took me a while to adjust to the fact there were things like a Topshop and a Wagamama just there

He nearly mowed me down on his scooter (metal folding type) a few weeks ago.

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Tiny tiny metal scooter more suited for a six year old in size.

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Yep. It seems to be ‘a thing’ in rochester. I’ve seen a few adults on them.

Omg I love Margate.