There are the white cliffs of Dover, magnificent castles, wartime relics, wide sandy beaches, sheltered bays and the largest shingle expanse in Europe. Abundant reminders of every period of the country's history and examples of most types of coastal terrain are to be found here. For those of a literary bent, the Kent coast has inspired authors as diverse as HG Wells, Russell Thorndike, Ian Fleming and Charles Dickens. Its most celebrated artist was Turner, whose sunsets never fail to move. Whitstable is a town eternally entwined with the sea with its weather boarded cottages next to the beach, its maze of smugglers' alleyways, its busy harbour and world famous oysters. The Beacon House itself has the distinctive clapboard exterior and arts and crafts interior, the pilot's cabin and beach hut neighbours. Stretching out to sea beneath it is The Street, a long finger of shingle and, in the distance the the wind farm and the Maunsell Sea Forts, occupied gun emplacements erected in the Thames Estuary in the second World War.