The county’s 350 miles of coastline hosts tours, walks, digs and exhibitions for Kent Coastal Week. Chris Price spoke to organiser Chris Drake.

What is Kent Coastal Week?

It is a week of events across the county celebrating our beaches and waterways, discovered with the help of experts and enthusiasts. Each year we pick a different theme and this year it is Historic Coast.

Why celebrate Kent’s coastline?

Kent has been on the frontline for invasion and trade for centuries, and has been integral to the story of Great Britain. It has a fantastic story, spanning 3,000 years, from the Bronze Age to the Second World War. There are such a range of organisations out there involved in historical and archaeological events and the week supports them.

What is there to do?

There are 51 events around the 350 miles of coastline from Saturday, October 27, to Sunday, November 4. People can get out on the water on a tug boat, the Motor Tug Kent, leaving from Chatham Maritime and see what the engine room of this 1940s vessel is like. It worked in the estuary up until 1988. Historical experts can satisfy the curious mind and there are fantastic archaeological projects to see, like the ones at Capel-le-Ferne and Folkestone.

How is Kent’s coastline different to others in the UK?

The landscape is the most varied in the country. The history is also very rich. Few other coastlines have changed shape so much. Thanet was still an island only a short time ago and Dungeness and the Romney Marsh has only existed for 500 years. Cooling Castle, near Strood, used to be much closer to the water and the events focus on the landscape change over the years in the county.

How do we find out about Kent Coastal Week 2012?

Type Kent Coastal Week into any search engine online or pick up one of the Kent Coastal Week leaflets.

Don't miss...

There’s a rare chance to see the dramatic sound mirrors, which were built on Romney Marsh as an early warning system for enemy aircraft.

Romney Marsh and Countryside Partnership walk leader Owen Leyshon says: “These sound mirrors are on an island at the back of a private gravel workings and we organise tours there about three or four times a year. They were built in the late 1920s and worked with a man standing facing them with a stethoscope, listening out for aircraft noise. The first was finished in 1928 and is a 20ft dish, which looks a bit like a cereal bowl and sits in the middle of the three. It was developed by Major Tucker, who served in the First World War and the design was improved with the 30ft dish, completed in 1930, and then the 200ft wall, completed in the same year.

“However, very quickly after finishing the last one, the military realised a much better system was radar, which gave them much more accurate information more quickly. So a plan to build more sound mirrors around the coast was mothballed and The three that werebuilt were never used in action.”

The tour to the sound mirrors takes place on Sunday, November 4, at 2pm. The next after that is in July. Tours are free, just turn up at Lade car park on Coast Drive, near Greatstone, at 2pm. Details atwww.rmcp.co.uk