I was down in East Sussex/Kent the other week. While I was there I went to Brighton, I've never been there before. I've never been so disappointed in a place in all my life - and I've been to
Las Vegas. The weekend before I went it was the Gay Pride festival, it looked like they'd followed it up with a litter throwing festival. Not clean. Even the main road going into the town centre wasn't very inviting.
Some friends of mine told me to go to The Lanes, 'The Lanes are great!' they said. Well, I suppose they're great if you're into a claustrophobic maze of jewellery and t-shirt shops. I spent a tidy five minutes in The Lanes
The seafront can't decide what it wants to be either, is is tacky traditional British seaside or
sophisticated cafe culture? Make your mind up.
The beach isn't even suited for bathing, with it being made up of pebbles. The same pebbles which are also deafeningly loud when the waves subside.
To cap it all, it cost me over £11 to park my car for six hours. Bah!
Having said that, I did have a strawberry milkshake to die for in Brighton. Oh, and
the Pavillion was pretty groovy, if a little expensive for what is, essentially, a council house.
What I did rate down there though was
Dungeness. That is like no place I've ever visited in Britain before. What do you get at
Dungeness? Well, you get two nuclear power stations, two lighthouses, a community of arty types living in wooden shacks and the biggest sky I've ever seen in the UK.
What you also get is the end of the line of the
Romney Hythe and Dymchurch Railway. I'm not normally into railways, but this one's great. It's the sort of uncommonly British day out that gets listed in these two
excellent books.What with it dating back to the 1920s, developers have gone up to it, so you get little level crossings bisecting residential
cul-
de-sacs. Who can't resist waving from a train carriage to people waiting in cars at level crossings? If you can, then there are no sticky buns for you at my house.
The other end of the line is in
Hythe, which is a lovely place, it's got a
Waitrose and everything. It was gorgeous sitting by the river eating an ice cream and watching people row boats up and down. I think that was on the day this year when it was actually summer. Apparently
Hythe has the longest High Street in Britain, and it was free of New Look, Next,
SupaSnaps etc.
Here's some video of the Romney
Hythe and
Dymchurch Railway. I did shoot some myself but You Tube wouldn't let me upload it.
