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Thursday 15 September, along the south coast to the east, Hastings

Great Britain 2005 - part XXVII

Elisabeth & Teije
2006-08-28 18:06:40

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We are glad we haven't slept in our tent last night, despite the costs: it is raining heavily when we get up and it looks very cold outside. Well, it is. Just when we want to drive away, Elisabeth discovers she has left her sunglasses in the room and she has to walk all the stairs again to get it, since we hope she will need them again one of these days, despite the lack of sunshine today.

The town where we are, Arundel, is a nice place, but we don't linger there too long. It is a small market town with a very impressive castle with many paintings and furniture from the 16rh century. But we have seen enough castles on the inside and skip this one.

Via Brighton we drive towards Eastbourne along the coast to the Seven Sisters. In this area we come upon another white horse, made in the chalk rocks and then we arrive at the Seven Sisters, 7 chalk cliffs that stand behind each other. There is a big storm going on when we get out of the car and we have to climb the stairs to the beach carefully down, since they are very slippery.

The sea is also quite turbulent and we can hardly hear what we say to each other. With calm weather this is probably a very nice place to be, but now we soon go upstairs again and into our car. We first want to take a coffee at the restaurant but then a bus stops with about 50 Dutch people who go inside and we decide we search for another place.

But first we start searching for the Long Man, a figure of almost 70 meters high which is carved into a hill and marked with stones. At some point we know we must be almost on top of it, but we don't see anything. We drive to and fro and finally the figure slowly appears from the mist. The origin of the figure is unknown but it could date back to the Bronze Age (2000 to 500 BC.).

Although there are still British optimists who walk in t-shirt outside, we don't think this is weather to walk outside, so we quickly search for a pub when we stop at Hastings. And when the rain starts to fall, people hide inside. We only choose the wrong cafe since we haven't had such awful coffee before in Great Britain (and Elisabeth hasn't had any nice cup until now, she likes her coffee fresh and strong).

With a small train (the West Hill Cliff Railway) we go to the top of the hill where the ruins of a castle stand but it is too cold and windy to walk around and the view on the harbour and pier is a bit depressing today, so we are back down in a couple of minutes and run to the car. We decide to drive around a bit through the neighbourhood, but we skip Battle, the place where the real battle of Hastings took place in 1066 AD.

From Rye we take the coastal route to the east, an area which looks very desolate on the map and in reality it also is. Sometimes desolate regions can be quite beautiful, but not here, it is just an open and bare plain and nothing to see. There is an airforce base and the military live in similar and very boring houses along the coast. So now we know nothing better to do than start looking for a hotel.
We drive to Canterbury and yes, you have guessed it right: all hotels are full! This time because there is a big wedding with hundreds of guests and all hotels in the neighbourhood are fully booked. We have no idea who is going to marry and the hotelowners also have no idea, but it must be a big hapening. And we were right to start early looking for a hotel, since it costs us 2½ hours before we find a room, which we can only have for one night, in Sandwich, a small but nice medieval town not far from the east coast. On our room we can enjoy the live concert that goes on in the pub below, which is quite good.

We feel tired, but it is more a sort of holiday-tiredness than physical. In fact we are quite happy that we return home the day after tomorrow. We have driven over 7000 kilometers now and seen a lot. It has been enough.