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Bleak House perched on the cliffs at Broadstairs, Kent, where Charles Dickens spent many summers and autumns and wrote most of David Copperfield.

In 1842, Charles Dickens spent six months in exotic America – a trip that took him and his wife, Catherine, from a log house in Pennsylvania to a steamboat along the Mississippi. The next year, he took his family away for the summer from his London home opposite Regent’s Park to… Finchley, north London.

Nowadays, a plaque on 70 Queen’s Avenue marks the spot. Then, it was the “sequestered farmhouse” of Cobley’s Farm, his “Arcadian retreat” of “green lanes” where on long walks Dickens devised Mrs Gamp while writing Martin Chuzzlewit.

The 200th anniversary of the birth of this most prolific of Victorian novelists was marked earlier this month with a wreath-laying at Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey – and this bicentennial year offers a frantic itinerary of ways to honour the great man (see dickens2012.org).

Dickens himself was very good at taking a holiday. A summer home was always important to him, though he usually went further than Finchley. Broadstairs, for example, a favourite for many years, was his “home from home”.

Back then, travel to Broadstairs was generally by river and sea from the wharf at London Bridge. Once established, he sent invitations to friends with instructions about boarding the Ramsgate steamer.

The Royal Albion, now somewhat removed from the jolly “Albion Hotel” where Dickens spent “merry nights”, still offers the same wide views of the sea that so enticed him: for three years his summer home was next door, a house later absorbed into the hotel.

Author Charles Dickens

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On Saturdays there is walking tour which includes a visit to Bleak House, formerly Fort House – the holiday home Dickens aspired to during his years here.

His first stay, in 1837, was in lodgings overlooking High Street. It was here that he finished The Pickwick Papers.

It was always important to Dickens to be close to the sea. The town has lovely beaches and he spent much time on them, with his children, with his friends, and swimming. Of course, he was also writing all the time. He started books here and finished books here.

The Dickens House Museum, also in Broadstairs, despite the name, is one house he did not stay in. It was the home of Mary Pearson Strong, the inspiration for Betsey Trotwood, the magnificent aunt of David Copperfield. Today, it is an interesting little museum where Betsey’s parlour has been recreated as described in the book and there’s Dickens memorabilia, including letters. – The Independent

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