Wild flower meadow

The Romney Marsh wildflower meadow is a proper tonic for anyone fed up with manicured gardens and sterile parks. You're walking through a riot of native blooms - cornflowers, poppies, vetches - all thrashing about in the wind like they haven't been told to sit in straight lines. It's the kind of place where you actually see things: butterflies doing their thing, bees getting on with work, maybe a skylark if you're lucky and quiet enough.

Walkers and nature spotters will find the most joy here. Families with young kids will get a solid hour of poking about, especially if you make it into a hunt for specific flowers or insects. Photographers should come late afternoon when the light turns golden and everything stops looking quite so mental.

Best visited between May and August when the flowers are actually, well, flowering. April will be sparse; September onwards and you're looking at seed heads and regret. It's a free spot - no gates, no ticket booth - so you can rock up whenever. Allow a couple of hours to properly wander without rushing.

If you're staying at Cabu by the Sea or Marlie Holiday Park, this is genuinely close enough for a morning trip before heading elsewhere. Romney Marsh itself is a bit bleak and beautiful - all big skies and drainage ditches - so the meadow sits nicely as a reason to get out and see what grows when nobody's yanking it all out.