Day 29 - To Brighton Beside the Seaside

The morning was fairly uneventful as I waited for delivery of our Prague to Krakow rail tickets.. They were due to be delivered between 8:00am and 1:00pm, and Murphey’s Law would dictate that they would arrive about 12:55pm. However the delivery guy turned up at 11:05am, almost two hours early!

I was already packed for my overnight stay in Brighton so walked to Clapham Junction rail station in time to catch the 12:12pm express train to Brighton. I must admit that I hadn’t realised that Brighton was quite so close to London, only about 45 minutes by express train. Once I had arrived in Brighton, and attended to a need for a caffeine infusion, I rang Sylvia to work out meeting arrangements. They were just back from a morning’s outing (to collect firewood as it happened) but would shortly be going to the beach so it was arranged that I would take the chance to explore Brighton – somewhere I had never been in all my time living in London, despite it being so close – and that we would meet on the beach later.

Thus I set off and began by exploring “The Lanes”, a maze of narrow alleyways that seemed to be mostly a massive collection of eateries of one sort or another. I was expecting more craft type shops, and I did eventually find some that may even provide the opportunity for buying a lizard!

Brighton Beach

Then it was on to see the famous Brighton seaside. It was a nice sunny day, though with a slightly cool breeze, so with the school summer holidays not quite finished there were still plenty of people making the most of what Brighton Beach had to offer. Which I should point out does not include either sand or surf as it would in Australia. No worries about sand in your shorts here, with the beach being composed of smooth pebbles, mostly about the size of a golf ball. And no worries about being bowled over by big waves for those brave enough to take a dip in the nippy water. The beach front however is lined with eateries, a couple of small museums, and today even a handful of market stalls at one end.

Brighton Pier

I did a promenade along the beach front all the way to the remains of the West Pier, which was destroyed by fire in the 1990s. Apparently it is now planned to be replaced by the “i360”, which will be a bit like a horizontal “London Eye” atop a tower that will make it the tallest observation tower in Britain. I walked all the way back to the famous Brighton Pier then all the way out to the end thereof. Apparently there used to be a theatre at the end of the pier but it is now collection of the usual sort of fun park rides such as you would see at countless places around the world.

With my sightseeing completed an exchange of text messages enabled me to find Sylvia on the beach with her family – partner Steve, daughter Alex (11) and son Jack (almost 9). We continued to sit and chat on the beach for about an hour and a half until it was time to call it a day. On the walk home, Sylvia and I popped into the local Co-op where Sylvia bought a few household supplies and I bought a bottle of Australian wine to go with dinner.

The dinner, and the wine, were both quite nice – as of course was the company and conversation. It was a very pleasant evening catching upon each other’s news from over the years, and finding out about aspects of local life that you don’t usually find out about as a casual visitor to a country.