Experience the best of Chatham

Chatham lies on the River Medway in Kent, one of the Medway Towns beside Rochester and Gillingham. The Royal Navy built ships here from the sixteenth century until the dockyard closed in 1984, and the historic dockyard, with its long rope-making hall, slipways and dry docks, is now a museum of the age of sail and steam. HMS Victory, Nelson's flagship at Trafalgar, was built at Chatham in the 1760s.

Fort Amherst, a Napoleonic fortress with tunnels dug into the chalk above the river, guarded the dockyard. Charles Dickens spent part of his childhood in Chatham, and his later novels draw on the Medway towns. In nearby Rochester stand the castle, with the tallest Norman keep in England, and the cathedral, founded in 604. Leeds Castle, near Maidstone, lies a short drive south-east.

Kent's orchards and hop gardens supply the apples, cherries, ales and ciders served in the Medway pubs. The estuary marshes downriver attract wading birds. Kent is among the drier counties, with mild summers.