A new book, Best Wild Places sings the praises of the storm-battered, the tumbledown, the rusting and the desolate.

If your days out usually feature a pricey tea room, audio guides and a telescope you slot 50p in to see the view, Christopher Somerville’s Best Wild Places might prove a bit of an eye-opener.

The author of 30 books, including the best-selling Coast, published by BBC Books to accompany the TV series, has put together what he calls “500 essential journeys” which include eight spots in Kent.

The author writes in his introduction: “I learnt to think of ‘the wild’ in different ways. It will get along just fine when we have blown, or argued or poisoned ourselves out of existence. Once I embraced that way of looking at things, I found wild places waiting around almost every corner.”

He takes us to Dungeness, where he writes: “Here is a vast arrowhead of shingle that plays host to hundreds of rare bird and animal species, lonely, unspoiled and beautiful. Here too are the giant grey blocks of twin nuclear power stations, rows of marching pylons and a spatter of shack-like dwellings. Unsullied, untouched by human influence? Certainly not. Remote, huge, moody? Absolutely.”

On a cold winter’s evening, the author visited the Coldrum Stones, at Trottiscliffe, near West Malling, a neolithic long barrow where the ancient remains of 22 people were unearthed in 1912.

He writes: “I found a fire smouldering in a little hearth dug into the turf. The branches of one of the guardian beech trees were hung with charms and tokens, ranging from a necklace of twisted silver strands to flints tied up in cloth strips and bows of gauze.

“Apart from the massive solidity of its chamber stones and their eyecatching positioning, what distinguishes the Coldrum monument is the continuing veneration in which some still hold it.”

On Sheppey he writes: “On the southernmost point of Sheppey stands the tiny Norman church of St Thomas, the remotest church in Kent, just inland of the Ferry House Inn, the loneliest pub. You can take your beer a few yards along the marsh path and feel as if you have the whole muddy, bird-haunted world to yourself.”

Of Goodwin Sands, three miles off the coast at Deal, he says: “Twice a day the Sands break the sea surface. Running aground here usually meant a violent and terrifying death. Most of those who survived the impact would be crushed to death between waves and sand, or drowned as the tide swept them away.”

Nice. A pleasant Sunday afternoon at Sissinghurst Castle Gardens seems a world away from this book, which is so beautifully written that I quite happily sat at home and read it from the comfort of my own sofa.

Not one of these places has anyone selling you a ticket to get in. Often all you will hear is squawking seabirds or a far-distant church bell.
Public toilets or picnic tables are a rarity on these pages. And think twice before heading to a few of them with tots in a pushchair– or your great nan. Eye-openers indeed.

FACTFILE

• Britain and Ireland’s Best Wild Places by Christopher Somerville is published in paperback by Penguin Press at £19.99.