As the celebrations for Charles Dickens' bicentenary begin, BRIAN PEDLEY visits the Medway places that inspired the novelist

IN THE village churchyard at Cooling in Kent I stop to look at a cluster of tiny lozenge-shaped gravestones.

The graves in the windy, rural flatlands on the edge of the cathedral city of Rochester mark the burial places of a family of children who died from malaria in the 18th century.

By these stones, so the guidebooks say, penniless orphan Pip in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations is terrorised by escaped convict Abel Magwitch, as portrayed in the Christmas BBC1 series.

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Dickens would be pleased to know Pip's "marsh country down by the river" survives in all its strange, windswept beauty from when the story was first published in 1860.

This year's celebrations to mark Dickens' 200th birthday also include a big-screen version of the story starring Helena Bonham-Carter and next Tuesday's BBC2 drama based on his final, unfinished novel The Mystery Of Edwin Drood, set and filmed in and around Rochester.

Charles John Huffam Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in Portsmouth but true Dickens Country is Kent where the writer spent much of his childhood.

At the height of his fame he returned to live close to the Medway towns that inspired him. "So much of the Rochester that Charles Dickens knew is still here," says guide Sandi Digby.

"Many of the London sites no longer exist but Rochester still has the living, breathing streets and buildings."

The walk through the parkland avenue, known as The Vines, to the 16th-century Restoration House with its black, ornamental iron gates could have been scripted by the man himself.

It turns out it was.

In Great Expectations Restoration House becomes Satis House, home of Miss Havisham, jilted on her wedding day to become the creepiest and most vengeful recluse in literature.

The Rochester Guildhall Museum, housed in a 17th-century building, charts Dickensian low-life. Sandi leads me through the sights and smells of a recreation of a Medway prison hulk.

Magwitch was held in one of these floating, rat-infested hellholes before his escape to shore and into Pip's life.

We walk to Rochester Castle, recognisable from Dickens' first novel The Pickwick Papers as a place of "frowning walls...tottering arches...dark nooks..."

Naval pay clerk John Dickens brought his family to neighbouring Chatham in 1817 when Charles was five. The young Dickens rapidly absorbed his surroundings, including the Roman numeral clock that still protrudes above Rochester High Street.

Off Blue Boar Lane at Eastgate House I find the chalet where he wrote many of his stories.

Relocated from Dickens' home at nearby Higham, it was a gift from an actor friend and arrived in 58 packing cases.

For lunch I tuck into a (Dickensian-sized) roast rump of beef in Topes Restaurant on the High Street, a setting where the heritage is as rich as the gravy.

At The Historic Dockyard Chatham I find the terraced office where John Dickens successfully managed the finances of others while his personal debts mounted.

Guided tours begin this year.

A short walk away is Dickens World.

Expensively created around a courtyard of settings from the books, it delivers the streets and dens, the smells, the cries, the squalor, the ragged urchins, the cut-throats and the blowsy women.

The author would surely have enjoyed every rancid moment, as I do.

He settled in Higham at Gad's Hill Place which he acquired in 1857 and which is now a school.

In A Christmas Carol, Scrooge is whisked back here by the Ghost of Christmas Past.

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The conservatory, the tunnel that led to his chalet, and the ground floor study with its door disguised as bookshelves all survive.

Dickens died on June 9, 1870, in what is now the school dining room.

His wish was to be buried in the moat of Rochester Castle but an adoring nation insisted on laying him to rest in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.

THE KNOWLEDGE

Bridgewood Manor Hotel (01634 201333/www.qhotels.co.uk) offers doubles from £85 per night (two sharing), B&B.

Footsteps in Time (01634 880990/www.mariner-house.co.uk) offers a walking tour of Rochester, £3pp.

The Historic Dockyard Chatham (01634 823800/www.thedockyard.co.uk), admission £15.50 per adult, £10.50 per child (5-15 years).

Dickens World, Chatham (01634 890421/www.dickensworld.co.uk), admission £13 per adult, £8 per child (5-15 years).

Visit Kent: 01634 843666/www.visitkent.co.uk. More information: www.dickens2012.org

Dickens of a festival

The Dickens and London exhibition at the Museum of London (0207 001 9844/ www.museumoflondon.org.uk) is the UK's first on the author for more than 40 years.

Recreating the atmosphere of Victorian London through sound and projected images, visitors can take a haunting journey through a city that inspired much of his work. Until June 10.

Portsmouth marks the writer's 200th birthday with a wreath-laying ceremony at the Charles Dickens' Birthplace Museum (02392 827261/ www.charlesdickensbirthplace.co.uk) on February 7.

There will also be street entertainers and musicians, food, crafts and readings.

Free admission to the museum will be available at timed intervals on February 5 and 7.