Summer arrives in Whitstable suddenly. One weekend the town is its usual winter-spring self — the locals having the place to themselves, the harbour quiet, the beach mostly empty — and then the next the train from London is full, the car park on the seafront is operating at the patience-testing end of its capacity, and the queue for oysters stretches past the fish stalls.
All of this is wonderful, actually. The energy that arrives with the season is genuine and it's hard not to be caught up in it.
The Beach
Whitstable's beach is shingle, not sand — which divides opinion, but which locals have strong feelings about. The shingle is quieter. It doesn't blow into everything. It has a particular sound — the tumble and hiss of a wave retreating over stones — that becomes one of the defining sounds of the place in your memory. The beach runs east from the harbour towards Tankerton, where the land rises to a gentle slope of grass above the waterline, and west towards Seasalter, where things become wilder and less visited.
Summer brings the beach huts into their full glory. Painted in colours that range from tasteful dove grey to something considerably more committed, they line the promenade above the high-tide mark and have been doing so, in various forms, for over a century. In summer they're in constant use — families, artists, people who own them and drive down from London on Friday evenings specifically to sit in front of them with something cold.
The Harbour
The harbour in summer is the centre of things. The Lobster Shack sets up its outdoor tables, the fish stalls do good business, the boats come and go, and on a warm evening there are people sitting on every available surface watching the light change over the water. It's the kind of scene that makes you understand why people write about England in summer with such feeling — it's not always this, but when it is, it's genuinely lovely.
The Oyster Festival
Usually held over a weekend in late July or early August, the Oyster Festival is Whitstable's biggest annual event — a celebration of the town's oyster heritage that involves music on the beach, oyster-eating in quantities, a blessing of the waters ceremony, and a general atmosphere of enthusiastic community festivity. It's crowded and it's chaotic and it's very good.
Evening Walks
The best time of any summer day in Whitstable is the hour before the light goes. The seafront at seven or eight in the evening — when the day visitors have started for the car parks and the town returns briefly to itself — has a quality of light and a quietness that's extraordinary. The sea goes a flat orange-pink, the beach huts cast long shadows, and for an hour or so everything is both completely ordinary and quite perfect.
Shop original paintings and prints inspired by the Whitstable summer at LRM Studio — and take a piece of the season home with you.
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