Ramsgate For A Tenner!

Hurrah! At last the iniquity of hipsters from the smog paying only a tenner for a trip to Margate, whilst being charged full whack to enjoy the delights of the sunnier south side of the Ile de Thanet, has been ended by Southeastern Trains!

So if any of you groovy Hoxtonites are planning to spend the upcoming bank holiday weekend in the Millionaires' Playground, you'll now have enough change left to buy a decent lunch at one of our fine dining destinations, and still have some left over for a deposit on a house! Plus you can experience the delights of being whizzed down here in just over an hour from St Pancras, in the heart of North Londonshire, on the superduper high speed trains!

Boredstares has also been included in the bank holiday bonanza, but frankly most of the shops there are boarded up these days, so best give that a miss. And quite why us Thanetians still have to pay the best part of a bullseye for the privilege of quick escape out of here is beyond me.

Update: What Southeastern don't tell you, of course, is that you can only buy a day return for a tenner. And the offer is only valid until the 26th of May. Kuh!

Click here for more details of Southeastern £10 tickets.

Ramsgate Off The Rails?

Cripes! I see there's yet more froth in the local rags this week about a putative 'Manston Parkway' station, and the upgrade of HS1 for the whisking of Londoners thereto.

Quite why Manston needs a 'Parkway', when there's already a perfectly good station just up the road at Ramsgate, lord alone knows. But supporters like Thanet North MP Sir Roger Wind guff on about it deliriously, as if it's the perfect panacea for our lacklustre landing strip.

A bunch of developers are now trumpeting it as 'the key to cutting journey times to and from London - making it (their development) more attractive to investors'. Cogent Land, who are proposing 800 homes on a 112 acre site east of the airport that they've dubbed 'Manston Green', say locating the station within their development would provide an 'important transport link to Westwood Cross, Manston Business Park and Discovery Park'.

This all might be a bit of a surprise to Ruddy-Faced Man and his cohorts at Kent County Council, who have proselytised a Cliffsend location for the 'Parkway'. A recent FOI request brought forth this curt response from the mandarins at Maidstone:

'Kent County Council (KCC) has not had contact with Cogent Land LLP regarding Thanet Parkway Station. The current stage of the development plan for the station is that the business case is being refreshed for the site that KCC originally identified for the station to the west of Cliffs End, while a watching brief is being kept over the Manston Green proposals.

In the event that a new station demonstrates a robust business case then KCC will follow the correct planning procedures in pursuing a planning application. To date, KCC Planning Applications Group has not been involved in this matter.'

Mind you, that's from the people who built you a whole load of traffic calming measures in Cliffsend, then unbuilt them a year later. So I suppose anything is possible.

Meanwhile a reader emails to say that the high speed trains are being discounted to 'all sorts of locations, including Margate and Broadstairs, but not Ramsgate'. She continues: 'Ramsgate has beautiful sandy beaches, a gorgeous Smeaton harbour, fabulous Georgian architecture and is 1hr 15mins from London. It knocks the socks off Whitstable and Deal in terms of beauty. How could anyone screw this up? Well 'they' have. And they continue to do so. We are now 3 places ahead of Margate on the deprivation index. How long before we are top? We need to fight.'

Looks like KCC and the Moonshine Band are already preparing us for the closure of Ramsgate Station, if you ask me!

Finally, talking of letting the train take the strain, reader Mike has emailed me a photo of what must certainly be the winning answer to putting off all those pesky trick-or-treaters on Halloween.

The Train Now Standing At Platform Two Is 83 Years Late

Talk about sleepers! Reader Chris has sent me this screen shot of Southeastern's website which he took whilst attempting to check the time of his train this morning. A closer inspection reveals this:

Either there's something about the Pleasurama aka Royal Sands aka Titanic development that they're not telling us, or they haven't updated their website since 1926, when the Ramsgate Harbour station, which stood on the Pleasurama site before it was Pleasurama, closed. Perhaps, like in Back to the Future III, they're stoking up their steam engine to break the 88mph time-travelling barrier as we speak!

No need though, because today was the first day of full service on the new high speed chuffers which will whisk you from the Millionaires' Playground to St Pancreas in the heart of norf London media luvviland at eyeball-rattling speeds of 1,ooo,ooo mph plus. Another Ramsgate reader who's using the service to commute each day writes:

With the start of the full service this morning Shepway Council were at St Pancras bright and early with a stand showing house prices in the area, their sh*tty harbour, and trumpeting the fact that they are 40 minutes closer than they were last week.

Contrast that with the Thanet Reich in Cecil Square, who have done, er, sweet football association to advertise our new proximity to the metropolis, or encourage investment on the back of the new high speed rail link, despite a commitment to do so in their 'Corporate Plan' (aka Sandy's scribblings after a day spent gluing carpet tiles). Apart, that is, from some muttering about a 'Manston Parkway station' which would have the effect of slowing the journey down again, or of making us millionaires sit in traffic jams as we drive out to a £1bn station built for the benefit of 10,000 air passengers a year. Talk about duffers!

Click here to relocate to Shepway (Folkestone in old money)
Click here for Southeastern timetable
Click here for more info about the high speed trains

Everyone Loves Ramsgate!

One of the things I'm missing here in France is the English papers. But earlier today I managed to catch sight of yesterday's London Evening Standard et voila! A huge item about Ramsgate!

Headlined 'Kent Gets Closer To London', the paper swoons on about fast train links, Ramsgate becoming a 'super commuter hub', and top notch restaurants like Harveys Fish Market and Age & Sons, all tipped 'to transform sleepy, left behind Ramsgate into the next Brighton.' Hmmm, not sure I quite believe that particular hype, or endorse the description of our town as a 'left behind' (does that make Margate the right?) But a nice little puff for the Ms' P nonetheless.

And speaking of Thanet's premier restaurant in Thanet's premier town, I notice the aforementioned Age & Sons is up for a gong in the Kent Restaurant Awards. It's nominated in both the Best English Restaurant category and the Best Cafe category, where it's currently in poll position ahead of Boredstares' Oscar Road Cafe. So why not scuttle along now and place your 'X' for Age in both categories? Go on, you know it makes sense. As somebody once said in some advertising thing. Er, was it Jimmy Savile?

Click here to vote for Age & Sons in Best Cafe category
Click here to vote for Age & Sons in Best English Restaurant category

Fast Train Arrives At Ramsgate Three Months Early

Oops! Wrong picture.

Nope. That's not it either.

Aha! That's the one! Now, where was I? Ah, yes... hurrah! Ramsgate is to get the new super-duper, 800mph trains that will whisk us well-heeled DFLs to and from the Millionaires' Playground in under 15 minutes from the start of next month. That's three months early!

The limited 'preview' service is in preparation for the real deal in December, when comfortable, half hourly supertrains will glide you into the magnificently restored St Pancras station, a mere hop, skip and jump from the heart of North London's media luvvyland (and my London bolthole most importantly).

Of course, one or two wizened Tory duffers on the north of the island with a regular need to go and fill in their expenses forms at Westminster or bladder themselves up at the annual old farts reunion will bemoan the fact that the service doesn't pull into shabby Victoria. But hey ho, they'll be dead soon so who cares? Besides it's only five stops on the underground from St Pancreas anyway. If they can last that long without a lavatory, that is.

Meanwhile, just to rub it in, here's one station the preview service won't be stopping at!

News Rubble

Four piles of news to report:

BONG! It seems our beloved council's planning department has actually refused Auclair Properties permission to rebuild our Grade II listed Marina Restaurant, which they so carelessly demolished 500 days ago.

At the time there were mutterings about prosecuting them unless they put it back together brick by brick. But due to the current state of the property market Auclair claimed that would be uneconomical without an 'enabling development', viz a carbuncle of 'luxury flats' welded to the side. According to my chum Bertie Biggles, the council has now grown a shiny set of Gordon Ramsay style testicles and told them to stick their carbuncle where the sun don't shine! Hurrah!

BONG! The super-duper, 800mph trains that will whisk Londoners to and from the Millionaires' Playground in under 15 minutes have begun regular services between Ashford and St Pancras. The limited service is in preparation for the real deal - Ramsgate to St Pancras - in December. No wonder fine restaurants and snazzy boutiques are opening up daily here in the Cannes of Kent! Here's a glimpse of one of the 3000mph trains on a test run out of Ramsgate:


BONG! The Met Office forecasts our lovely tip of Kent could well be a sizzling 56 degrees centigrade by summer 2080 due to global warming. By then it'll definitely be time to break out the parasols and pinas, as Ramsgate basks in Mediterranean sun while Marbella burns to a crisp! Mind you, I'm not sure Kaddy Tea-Pot and the rest of the weather chaps have perfected the five day forecast yet, let alone the 72 year one!

BONG! And finally, who's this doing a Judith Chalmers impersonation on behalf of Thanet Council?


And there was me thinking Smell the Profit was a stinker! 'Ramsgate is easily accessible by car, boat train or plane. European flights are available into Thanet's own Manston Airport.' Actually it was only Jersey the last time I looked, luv!

Ramsgate Gets The Bullet

Hurrah! I see the BBC News website is reporting the opening of the new, super-duper depot for those lovely high speed Japanese trains here in the Millionaires' Playground. It won't be long before I'm being whisked to important appointments with TV executives in London in less time than it takes to say 'I ----ed Russell Brand's grandmother'! Er, which I didn't, I hasten to add.

The depot has cost £35m to build and will create 160 jobs, more than our polluting airport has managed in a decade, and so much better for the environment than all those lorries and concrete the local Tory duffers want to pour on poor old Acol, without any clear idea of whether it'll create any jobs at all.

The best bit is the new service will take me into St Pancras which, as we all know, is a mere hop, skip and jump from the heart of the known creative universe - Norf London. After all, the only reason I can think of for going to Victoria is to collect your OBE for services to broadcasting!

Trainspotters click here to read full story on BBC website

Let The Train Take The Strain

Ramsgate has been acclaimed as one of the five most improved train stations in the country by the Campaign for Better Transport (formerly Transport 2000). The report highlights facilities for cyclists, improved access for buses, and sympathetic treatment of the Grade II listed building.

Splendid! Now all we need is those bullet trains and we've got ourselves our own little slice of St. Pancras!

Campaign for Better Transport report

Bullet Train Bulletin

I see today's Observer is reporting that our new Japanese bullet trains are due in at Southampton docks any time soon. The super-duper, 140mph service will run from 2009, and cut the journey time from the Millionaires' Playground to London's newly revamped St Pancras down to just over an hour. Or just over an hour and 20 minutes if you're a Conservative.

Our train operator is quoted in the newspaper as saying that 'property prices are heading north' because of the new link. I presume that means that the price of a semi in Ramsgate will soon be so eye-watering that people might be forced to consider buying in Margate.

Full Observer report