It's flat. Very flat. And almost featureless. Take the landscape of the Llano Estacado in West Texas and Eastern New Mexico, flatten it out a bit more, criss cross it with dykes, fill it with sheep and paint it a fresh shade of green. Now maybe flatten it out one more time. Then you should end up with a view that looks something like this.
Like Texas, the landscape is 80% sky.
Why does it look like this? Well, 750 years ago this was all sea, until the Great Storm of 1287. This altered the coastline of Kent and Sussex in many ways - the ports of Winchelsea and Rye found themselves stranded two miles inland, Hastings lost its harbour, the Isle of Thanet stopped being an island and the seabed started silting up, creating 100 square miles of new land - Romney Marsh. Even now, most of it is still below sea level, and the only things standing higher than hedge height are the few farm buildings, trees and churches.
Driving on the Marsh is great fun - the roads zig and zag unpredictably, crossing ditches at right angles and following the patterns of old field boundaries that have long since vanished. Mists blow in from the sea, atmospherically.The great thing about Romney Marsh for a cartoonist is that it's very easy to draw - it's essentially a horizontal line with a few trees added to it.
Find out more about Romney Marsh here… (Warning - site contains Comic Sans)
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