One of the best things about returning to a country where you were born and spent the biggest slice of your life is that you begin to see things as a tourist rather than a local.

So it was this week that in warm spring sunshine I wandered London, from Victoria, through St James’s Park, across Pall Mall to Piccadilly, then Leicester Square, Trafalgar Square and finally to Covent Garden where we lunched while being entertained by buskers singing Verdi.

When the sun shines, and you’re in no particular hurry to meet a deadline, London is great place to be with a good friend.

Around Buckingham Palace, huge crowds were watching a rehearsal of an upcoming royal event. Alongside St James’s Park a military band in scarlet uniforms was marching back to barracks.

In the park, visitors peered through the heat haze to the Palace, or swivelled their heads to Whitehall and the London Eye.

This was also the week when I discovered Whitstable – “England’s chicest seaside resort”, according to one magazine.

I grew up within 10 miles of Whitstable yet always passed it by.

“Chic” is relative and we are not talking Cannes, Nice or Le Touquet here, but Whitstable certainly has a quirky charm.

There is a vast stretch of pebble beach washed by an often grey and churning North Sea.

Rows of that peculiarly British institution, the garishly painted beach hut, line parts of the foreshore.

A sign on a beachside home records that the late horror film star, Peter Cushing, once lived there.

Whitstable is famous for its oysters - out of season when there is a letter ‘R’ in the month, so instead - from May to August - they import them from Dublin Bay and sell them from harbour side stalls along with prawns, cockles, whelks, eel and fresh fish landed from the boats lining the small harbour jetty.

One of England’s most famous fish restaurants, Wheeler’s Oyster Bar, is here, jostling for attention with The Whitstable Oyster Fishery Company, the Crab and Winkle and Pearson’s Crab and Oyster House - each a weekend magnet for Londoners eyeing a gastronomic day out.

During summer weekends, the waterfront stalls sell everything from fresh strawberries and cherries to Portuguese olives, local art to garden plants and ice creams.

A young man with a fluffy white dog – he’s French, I guess correctly - shares an ice cream with his pooch.

There are pubs like The Neptune, standing foursquare to the sea, and hotels like the Savoy and the art deco Hotel Continental which have retained their charm despite the ravages of time and tide.

There isn’t a Prada, Louis Vuitton or Burberry shop in sight on Harbour Street, and after arriving in the UK from Dubai, with all its implanted glitz and excesses, Whitstable is indeed a breath of North Sea fresh air.

English seaside resorts have gone through hard times, but the UK government has started to direct funds their way in the hope that the best of them can be saved.

The oyster town of Whitstable is the pearl on the sea shore of Kent.

Long may it continue.