Birthdays, Castles, Peaks and Old Houses

Birthdays, Castles, Peaks and Old Houses

Birthday wellies on Arthur's Seat

Finally posting the next few days of our trip.

The following morning the weather was clear and provided as good and opportunity as we were going to get for tackling Arthur’s Seat, which was supposed to afford the puffing climber the best possible view of Edinburgh. It was also my birthday, and given on of my much hinted (read ‘directed’) birthday presents was a pair of gumboots, I was quite happy to attempt the peak once decked out in my new stripy wellies. 

The view from the top was lovely - we could see the west where our day’s drive was to take us, and the north where snow capped mountains were just visible on the horizon. and we could see Edinburgh, her castle and palace, parks, winding old town and uniform new town and suburbs set out below us - and we could see the sea. 

Stirling Castle

A much quicker decent than assent, and we piled back into the car and off to the West. Our first stop along the way was to be Stirling castle (if you’re starting to see a theme with our points of interest I don’t blame you). Lonely Planet had pronounced Stirling Castle as the one castle that must be seen in Scotland - even above Edinburgh Castle. With that kind of recommendation how could we possibly just drive past. The castle, clearly visible form the highway certainly does catch your attention. Build right up to the cliff face of the hill that its on, you have amazing views from below of the castle looming up at you. 

The Wallace Monument

Another monument commanding the view is the Wallace Monument built in 1869 in a nationalistic surge. Looking like some destroyed abbey, this impressive viewing tower  and museum stands over the valley bellow - and if nothing else provides for some spectacular photos. 

Stirling Castle was the seat of Robert the Bruce at one point, and actually defended itself against sieges and cannon fire, the evidence of which can still be seen on the walls. A lot of effort has been invested in recent years to restore the apartments and great hall. 

Stirling Castle 

We arrived just as two groups of school children also descended on the castle and grounds. The first were teenagers and they merely moped about the gardens whilst encouraged by their teachers. The primary school kids on the other hand screamed around the castle - both at pace and volume - running up and down every stairwell they could find and pinging off every nook and arrow slit. They tangled about our legs as we tried to see the outer castle buildings, followed by their rather harangued teachers and volunteer parents shouting at them to look where they were going (and wishing they’d taken them somewhere more sedate). 

A walk walk

To escape the kids we wandered down the outer wall of the castle, past the sheds that had been specially built outside the main walls to hold the gun powder, to find, at the very end of the road, an exhibit on weaving - specifically on the recreation of The Hunt of the Unicorn Tapestries.  The exhibition includes a full scale loom with one of the recreation tapestries in progress.  Usually there are three weavers working on the tapestry 7.5 hours a day, 5 days a week - it takes 4 years to finish one of the full scale reproductions. Unfortunately they had been sent to help finish another one of the tapestries in the collection and weren't there. I have however been inspired to do a weavers course at the college that trains the weavers for this project. It is almost a lost art, and the product is so beautiful. I might start small though - a cushion perhaps. 

After finishing our wander through the castle we got back on the road to the Trossachs national park on a quest to see Rob Roy Macgregor’s grave. When the family drove around Scotland in 1998 we had found the tiny village of Balquhidder in which he is buried and given we were going to be staying quite close I was keen to find it again. We drove right along the shores of Loch Lubnaig then up into the hills behind, along extremely narrow lanes and finally pulled up to the church yard where he is buried. Rob Roy Macgregor was still buried where we had left him 14 years ago with the epitaph ‘Despite them’ still on his grave stone. What I hadn't remembered was the beauty of valley and the churchyard that the grave sits in with the rushing stream nearby and grand trees growing inside what was once the church. 

From Balquhidder we headed back down the hills towards our B&B for the night. We decided on setting out to use Sawdays for all of the places we were going to stay. We discovered Sawdays thanks to our friend Rose’s recommendation when we first got here as a generally good guide of where to stay. The only place Sawdays couldn't help us was Dundee where we ended up in a lovely hotel. In Edinburgh all the places they recommended were full, so we ended up at 11 Nelson st which was the recommendation of someone on the Sawdays list. 

We had picked out a particularly special looking place for the night of my birthday. Cadross Estate was described as a manor house on an estate with a couple of self contained cabins, and a couple of rooms for B&B in the main house. Dogs were apparently welcome.  We arrived at the end of a long drive at the front of a house that was straight out of Pride and Prejudice (which I had been reading aloud to Tony for the last few months and finished while on the trip). We were welcomed at the front door by Archie and Nicola and their terriers Beetle and Scrumpy. We entered into a large front room with a welcoming fire. Archie checked with Nicola which room we were to stay in (out of the many bedrooms in the house). She replied that we were to be in Alistair’s old room - their son.  We were shown up a grand staircase past the family portraits, embroidered panels and grandfather clocks. 

The front room

Beetle by the fire

Birthday champagne and P&P by the fire

Once we settled in we all had tea in the library by the fire and we read the short history of the house that was prepared for guests. We realised that our hosts were the Baronet Archibald Donald Orr-Ewing and Lady Nicola Orr-Ewing, and that the family had owned the house for generations. I don’t think I've ever met a real Lord and Lady - eep! At least I didn't dunk my biscuits in my tea. They were extremely gracious hosts, made us the tea and hot chocolate, and sat and chatted about our trip so far, where we were from and where we were going. Archie excused himself as he had organised to go curling (the strange sport where you brush the ice in front of rocks with little brooms to get the rock in the goal), but promised he’d be back for dinner. Nicola offers dinner to her guests (for the tiny sum of £30 per head), and so we settled on 8pm and she left us to our own devices while she went to prepare the meal. We settled by the fire with a bottle of Moet we had brought with us and continued reading P&P (a copy we borrowed from their library) by the fire with the company of the dogs until dinner was ready. 

The Library

We had dinner in the small dinning room, accessed through the main dinning room (picture something from Netherfield with large paintings on the walls and grand windows overlooking the park). Whilst not as romantically grand, this was the practical choice as the realities of heating such a large house became apparent. Fires in every room only barely kept up with the -1 degree temperatures outside and the smaller the room, the warmer and cosier you were. Nicola and Archie (once he returned victorious from his curling) dined with us and the conversation turned to everything from politics to environmentalism. Their son Alistair, whose old room we were occupying was up from Sandhurst the following weekend with 20 friends. As all parents do they were lamenting about how they were going to feed a party of that size (lasagne made in bulk and the kitchen table added to the end of the normal large dinning table in the main room - sounds just like parties at our farm). Alistair is off to Afghanistan for his second tour in a couple of weeks. Our best wishes for his safe return are with his parents. 

It was an excellent dinner, and an experience i’m not sure we’ll ever get to repeat. After dinner we retired to the library, read a few more chapters of P&P and slipped up to bed.  

Edinburgh - Old Town and New Town

Edinburgh - Old Town and New Town

11 Nelson St - with the blue door

Our third morning started of the Northern adventure on the very top floor of a 5-storey house in New Town in Edinburgh. Our next B&B at ’11 Nelson St’ was a lovely and large town house occupying the top 2 floors. We were at first very confused. We entered the flat through a door that had only 2 names on the front - and was right next door to the others on either side (we could have leaned over the railings and knocked on their doors instead just about). In the door we had the choice only of immediately up the stairs or down. It wasn’t till we’d climbed 4 floors that we came to a single door - and at this level we found both of the 2 doors advertised at the front. This meant that the 2 flats entering by this door occupied only the 4th and 5th floors. The people occupying the 1st, 2nd and 3rd must have entered by the doors on either side of the street facing front door. Neither of us had ever come across such a complicated way of arranging apartments, and it occupied much of the breakfast conversation between us the next morning as to how they must all be laid out. 

The beautiful wallpaper in the bathroom 

The top of the stairs

11 Nelson Street was beautiful, however, the rooms large, ceilings high, wallpaper stunning and art quite interesting. When we arrived they were in the process of switching the dinning room and lounge rooms (something Mum used to delight in doing when Dad went out - so he would come how to find the house completely swapped over and all of us behaving as if everything were normal). We breakfasted in what had been the lounge, which made for an extremely spacious and rather grand dinning room, and I am determined to have similarly large rooms in any house I build in the future. 

Edinburgh Castle

We ventured from New Town to Old Town on foot, passing the Old Mound, and gaining an excellent view of the castle on the way up (and a good appreciation of the exhaustion of any attacking army at trying to ascend the hill - although we weren’t wearing any armour). Lonely Planet had recommended a walk through Old Town that seemed to assume that everyone would be staying at the foot of Edinburgh Castle. By the time we had huffed our way to the top of the walk we realized that the Castle was in fact only 50m to our right, and that the walk proposed to take us back down to the bottom of the hill again (and have us then ascend the hill to the Castle). We decided to abandon the suggested walk and head instead to the Castle. 

The view form the castle forecourt

The views of Edinburgh from the Castle are pretty spectacular, and you can see how tribes in the Bronze Age would have chosen it as a place of protection (although windy). We arrived just in time for a tour and so wound our way to the top with the assistance of a lovely Scotch guide who explained interesting details of the various previous uses of the castle, and the history of its defenses. The castle is still used today by the Army, and so we saw some chilly looking men wandering around the castle in their ceremonial uniforms (kilts!) who were apparently going through some sort of graduation ceremony. After a walk through the great hall, a peek at the Scottish royal jewels and a quick lunch, we descended the castle hill to the sound of the bagpipes being played and caught in the wind. Our timing was excellent. 

The steep ascent for any attackers

One interesting part of our tour was the very recently returned Stone of Destiny. It had been the cube of stone on which all Scottish kings had been crowned for 400 years until Edward I conquered the north, stealing the stone and taking it down to London. It formed part of the ceremonial chair in Westminster used to crown the kings and queens of England (and Scotland since James I of England and VI of Scotland) for the last 700 years. Only recently did the current Queen decide that it ought to be returned to Scotland (on the promise that it be returned when the time comes for the next coronation).

Tony preaparing to wander the city on his own

Tony spent the afternoon exploring the Old Town on his own while I curled up in our room suffering the effects of the ‘Edinburgh Epidemic’ of gastro bugs apparently sweeping the city. Much rest would be needed for my birthday the following day. 

The North - getting there

The Northern Adventure begins - the journey there

Pea Soup

We set off for our northern adventure on one of those foggy London days that people call ‘pea soup’, and that Sherlock Holmes describes loosing his criminals in. We trudged through the mist to pick up our car, which to Tony’s delight had been upgraded from a VW Polo to a Pergeot 308CC convertible - not that the weather was going to be conducive to having the top down.  

Our first stop was Kings College Chapel in Cambridge - partly because it was on the way to Yorkshire where we were spending the night. We walked through the beautiful streets of the university town to get to the Chapel. It was graduation day so we had the added bonus of seeing the students striding around in their gowns, posing with their parents. 

Busy Cambridge Streets

Inside the Chapel was as beautiful as I remembered from my visit with Mum and Dad in 1998. What I hadn’t remembered was the intensity of the Tudor motifs. As one of the plaques pointed out, the Tudors had just won a long civil war, and so probably felt entitled to revel in creating a beautiful church filled with their red and white rose. While we were sitting and enjoying the stained glass windows and the elegant fan vaulted ceiling, the Organist started practising. We finished out visit bathed in the peals of the organ as it echoed around the walls. 

Outside Kings College Chapel

We bundled ourselves back into the car - and because it now gets dark (proper dark) here at about 4pm in the afternoon, abandoned plans to drive through Ely (it apparently got its name from the Eels that use to thrive in the water around the village - eel pie is still served as a local speciality) and headed straight for Yorkshire. 

We were booked into The Mount House, a stunning B&B in the little village of Terrington which is in estate of Castle Howard. The drive was tough - only 2.5 hours - but all of it in the pouring rain on unknown roads. We arrived tired at 6.30 to be welcomed into the lovely warm house of Kathryn and Nick and their two Labradors and a cat. After a glass of wine, the tail end of the rugby, good chats to our hosts and a freshen up, we jumped back in the car to head to the local gastro pub ‘the Durham Ox’. Named after an Ox that was apparently over 1000k and stood 5’10”, the pub is in the village of Crayke which sits at the bottom of the hill that the Grand Old Duke of York marched his 10,000 men up and down.  The pub served excellent local steak, game, and deconstructed apple crumble. perfect fare in the cold and wet. 

We drove through the winding country roads back to the Mount House and curled up in our gloriously soft bed. 

Houses, Romans and Ruins 

After a lovely leisurely breakfast, with plenty of coffee, pats of the dogs, and lessons on my ipad for Kathryn and Nick, we packed the car and set off. We had wanted to go for a walk locally but persistent rain and strong wind meant that it would have been just miserable. Instead we went for a drive around the nearby villages while we waited for Castle Howard to open.

Castle ruins at Sheriff Hutton

One of the most amazing things about driving through Britain is the ability to drive through a village, and look up and see the ruins of a castle or an abbey. Our first real experience of this was driving through the village of Sheriff Hutton. We pulled off the road to take photos. What was most striking was that the village had probably been there as long as the castle had, and when the castle fell into ruins, the village just continued on around it. 

The approach to Castle Howard

Getting excited about castles was nothing compared to Castle Howard. We were very lucky as many of the manor houses are only open during the summer - however Castle Howard opens again for the end of November  (yesterday to be exact) until Christmas so the public can see the house decorated with lights and holly. Castle Howard was the set for Brideshead Revisited, and for anyone who has seen the movie, you may remember the approach to the house - long straight roads through archways and gatehouses lined by trees. Even in the winter with the trees all bare, it really is breathtaking. 

Walls - to keep things out - or in

The door to the walled garden

We got ourselves tickets from the stable courtyard where the visitors’ reception is and wandered down the hill towards the house. On the right hand side of the walk down is the walled rose garden and ornamental vegetable garden. We opened a very unassuming door in the wall and suddenly found ourselves in a private world. It felt just like something from The Secret Garden (Tony hasn’t ever read or seen it so I had to give him the Reader’s Digest version as we wandered around). No one else visiting the house was bothering to look at the grounds (it was still raining and quite cold) so we had the place entirely to ourselves. 

The front of Castle Howard

The Moat

The house itself is so ‘happily situated’ by the shores of a large lake, surrounded by woods and rolling hills. Built around 300 years ago by the Howard family - after their brush with royalty when HenryVIII married Catherine Howard and then beheaded her - and has been owned by the same family ever since. The tour of the house is really comprehensive - walking through bedrooms, music rooms, through the main entrance hall (with a quick stop to warm up by the fire), up the stairs to look down from the gallery. Adorned with christmas decorations it actually felt like a home. Pictures of the current generation of children stood on the desks and pianos as they would in any house, and presents under the various christmas trees were wrapped and named by a mother (and not a stylist). Unlike visiting Versailles - which just feels like a museum - Castle Howard was a modern example of how to run a large (and expensive) house, whilst remaining engaged with the local community that now supports it - rather than the other way around. 

Castle Helmsley

From Castle Howard we headed for the Yorkshire Moors for a taste of Wuthering Heights. At the entrance to the Moors National Park however we got sidetracked by the castle in the village of Helmsley. The castle had been started in the 1100s and added to over the next 600 years. It has quite amazing defenses which still survive - a ditch, a very high hill, then a deep moat, then another steep hill and then the castle. During the English Civil War the defenses were tested as the castle was under siege for 3 months until they surrendered. The parliamentarians  determined that the castle be destroyed to prevent it being used in future by the royalists - and so most of the towers were knocked down - and later pillaged by local farmers for the stone. We had a great time clambering around the ruins in the cold and imagining how hard it would have been to actually attack such a well placed castle. 

From Helmsley we drove into the moors. The countryside actually changed colour - from rolling greens to reds and browns - and craggy peaks. It was easy to imagine it as a fitting scene for King Lear to be wandering and Heathcliff to be ranging. A couple of quick roadside stops for photos and we headed for Hadrian’s wall and the remains of Corbridge Roman Town. 

The Moors

The Grain Stores at Corbridge Roman Town

We got there just on dusk (3.30pm) and rushed out to wander the streets of what was once the frontier of the Roman Empire. We were quite astonished at the level of sophistication in the frontier town - carefully constructed grain silos with channeled air underneath the floor to keep the grain dry, stone drains in the streets (with carefully laid stones to allow you to cross without falling in). But most amazing of all was the road - the main street - which connected Corbridge with the other Roman Towns along Hadrian’s Wall all the way across. By the time we finished it was too dark to see the wall itself so we set the TomTom for Edinburgh, and we’ll catch the wall on the way back South. 

As I write this we have just crossed the Boarder into Scotland and will be in Edinburgh in an hour. The real North begins. 

Candlelit '20s

A night out by candlelight

Since moving to London I have been itching to engage with the history of the place - so much as passed within these walls, and on these streets, and I was sure that somewhere in London I could find a bit that felt like the past.

You have moments, walking through the old cobblestone streets that survive in London, under the eaves of Tudor buildings (Tony always tells me they're fake), when you feel like you're transported to another time. They're rare as you travel your way to work on the tube in your corporate suit but they are there.

They are also there when you look for them. I went hunting for a 1920s night - and I found it. The Candlelight Club is a 'secret club' (with a facebook site and a webpage). Every month they organise and run a 1920s night with well researched cocktails, a band playing hits from the 20s, champagne in flat glasses, and a slightly different take on the 20s each time. During the Olympics it was 'games in the 20s', before that 'rum runners', and the weekend we got tickets for - 'an Indian Summer'.

Tony decided that if I was going to drag him along to this pretend night in the 20s, that he would at least embrace it full on. He shaved his beard off - much to my horror, found the suite in his wardrobe that suited the indian theme the best, and got into the drinking champagne out of flat glasses thing with gusto.

I decided I wouldn't wear the flapper dress I made last year - as every other girl would be in one. I instead chose to be a little ahead of the times with a 1930s dress in silk, floor length, with batwings, covered in a frangipani pattern, to better complement the Indian nights.

The nights are impeccably organised - secret locations communicated the night before, excellently researched cocktails, nibbles, and band. We spent half the night drinking and eating and watching everyone else, and the rest of the night carving up the dance floor - not sure dancing salsa to 20s is quite the done thing but oh well.

The room is entirely lit by candlelight - and I had never realised quite how bright the rooms must have been before lightbulbs. I did go home covered in candlewax - and looked up how to remove it the next morning - but it gave the whole night a special feel.

We are booked to go to the next one with a group of friends - Halloween Ball 20s style - suggestions for costumes welcome. Can't wait.

The Globe - lessons in English History via Shakespeare

Richard III and Henry V at the Globe

I remember in high school when one of my English teachers said that London had recreated Shakespeare's Globe. I don't remember if I was skeptical about a 'fake' globe and whether it would feel all a bit too much like pretending to do things 'how Shakespeare intended'. Tony certainly was when I announced to him that we would be going along to not one, but two Shakespeare plays at the Globe before the summer was over.

An empty Globe

It turns out that whilst the Globe is open for tours all year round, it only has a theatre season during the summer. Having now been to see a play outside at the end of September in London I can see why. The Globe's only modern convenience inside the theatre itself are lights - just enough to allow them to do evening performances until daylight savings ends - not stage lights, no spotlights and no special effects. There is no roof, you are exposed to the wind, the rain - and even the passing aircraft . It is glorious but requires a certain amount of luck, and warm clothing.


Once you walk through the doors, push past people,  find your seats (if you're amongst the posh crowd), or get a good vantage point from the floor, you are transported back 400 years. The theatre with its wooden posts supporting the upper seating levels, the bare benches (cushions are £1 each to hire on the way in), the marbled pillars and painted backdrops are excellently done. It is a remarkably small space (whilst seating and standing hundreds), which allows for the actors voices to travel to the highest reaches (even over a buzzing helicopter).

Handsome Henry V

We went first to see Henry V - my favourite history Shakespeare - at the end of August. It was still hot - and we went without jackets. We had splashed out on the posh seats (at about £35 each plus cushions) and were sitting on the lower level - about level with the stage. When we bought the tickets they warned that the view was obstructed (this is really common as the supporting posts go all the way around and are really solid - probably a good thing). I sat behind the pillar as I know the play well and wanted Tony to see everything that was going on. I did spend much of the play chasing the actors around the stage by leaning this way and that to see around the pole - but it didn't matter. As soon as the Hearing the opening lines of the Chorus implore you to forget your hard seats and the confines of the 'wooden O', you really are transported to the fields of France imagining the thousands of soldiers, the horses, the castle walls and the shouts of battle.

Somehow I don't think i'll ever quite be able to enjoy the way Shakespeare is done in modern times in quite the same way. Growing up on Bell Shakespeare I always enjoyed the modern twist he'd add, modern dress, amazing sets, music etc. The 'real deal' at the Globe however highlights how perfect these plays are as they were written - timeless in both their story-line, and their audience appeal - without the need for costume, music or set to translate for a modern audience. In particular the jokes and audience throws were so much more obvious - the way in which Shakespeare plays to the crowd and engages them in the action. Tony spent the whole time wanting to cry out 'he's behind you'!

In Henry V the crowd was the army King Henry appeals to through his St Crispian's Day speech. We were the soldiers expected to rush forth in full battle cry in response to 'once more into the breach dear friends, once more!'. I have never before felt such an urge to rush onto the stage and be part of the action.

Pistol and the Welshman - eating the leek

In Richard III, in once scene where the guards were debating whether or not it was right to kill the Duke of Clarence as ordered by Richard of Gloucester. Mid debate one knelt and asked the closest member of the audience 'what do you think?' At once the audience thought 'I'm glad he didn't ask me' while also laughing at the engagement with the audience on this moral dilemma.

Roger Lloyd Peck as Buckingham

We unknowingly booked tickets to the closing night of Henry V - which meant that the actors were in full flight. The Welsh jokes were flowing in particular - more text populated with 'Look You's' than I remembered from Shakespeare's text - but the actors were evidently enjoying themselves.

We were also really impressed with the quality of the actors. Roger Lloyd Peck (who I knew first as the eccentric father from Cold Comfort Farm) played an outstanding Buckingham. I recognized 'Sir Pitt' from the BBC's Vanity Fair - playing Pistol. The other actors - whilst I didn't recognize them - were superb.

Richard III and Anne (a male actor playing a woman)

Richard III was Tony's favourite. Captivating from the first moment we walked through the doors - finding our standing 'seats' part way through the introduction with a drink in each hand - we were immediately held by Richard. Not a hunchback - but a deformed cripple as Shakespeare implied, we was excellent. The audience loved and hated him at the same time. Once he was asked (by his own design) to be king, the audience was invited to cry 'God Save King Richard, the one and rightful king' - which we did dutifully.

We exited both performances absolutely brimming with excitement and praise at what we had just witnessed - and next season we will make it to every show. 

I want to go to Brighton!

I Want to go to Brighton!

Brighton Beach

On about Tuesday last week Tony and I decided we wanted to go away for the weekend. We looked on the map, and after looking at some lovely escapes recommended by Sawdays over near Bristol, we decided we just wanted somewhere close. As it turned out - one of the  closest pieces of beach to London is Brighton. 

All I knew of Brighton was that it was the scene of Lydia's disgrace in Pride and Prejudice - and that 'a little sea bathing' would have set Mrs Bennett up forever.  Nevertheless we threw out 'togs' and beach towels into our duffel bags, slung them over our shoulders and jumped on the train with all the rest of London escaping to the beach for what was forecast to be a properly sunny weekend.

Brighton Pier

Brighton, no longer the place of Regency era parties, balls and promenades, is now a bustling English resort.  We booked into The Old Ship Hotel facing the waterfront and neatly between Brighton Pier and West Pier, in a room on the top floor overlooking the sea. The hotel was once obviously the scene of dances, with reception rooms still used today for weddings and the like. It had lovely folding doors opening the bar and restaurant onto the beachfront - letting in the sea breeze where we ensconced ourselves with cold beer to escape the heat.

We had spent our morning wandering the promenade, taking in the carnival sights on Brighton Pier (which is basically like sideshow alley from the Canberra Show - but over the water).Do not be fooled into thinking that any actual fishing or boats are associated with this Pier. I imagine if you were a teenager spending the summer in Brighton with your folks, it would be a great place to kill time - but for us we were more than satisfied with a quick walk the full length and back - cultural experience done.

Below the Promenade

One thing that has amazed us is the lengths the English went to to transform the beachfront for their purposes. Apart from the two huge piers - but built for leisure not work - a promenade the entire length of the heads was built - with wrought iron arches, and long gentle ramps to take you down to the sea.  Such effort to fore the sea to shape to people seems very at odds to us as Australians - even Bondi hasn't tamed the beachfront to this level. The promenades do however provide a useful roof for bars, clubs, restaurants and cafes that line up to serve the swarms of people promenading their way past.

Pebbles for Sand

Tony being forced to pose for a photo

Also very odd to us was the pebbly beach - quite painful to walk on rare foot - but conveniently means you come out without the usual covering of sand. We only bothered to go in up to our knees but spent a long time sitting on the pebbles watching other people play in the tame surf less water. With no waves, and therefore no rips, we realised why it is that English tourists get to Bondi and promptly have to be rescued by our lifeguards. They haven't grown up with an understanding and respect for the rules of the waves and the sea.

The only way to sit on this beach

After buying me a large sun hat (I left all mine in Australia) we also realised how little respect there is here for the sun. We re both covered in 50+ sunscreen, and me now also in my umbrella sized hat and still felt it was time to heat out of the sun after a few hours. However no one else seemed to ca re - most of them were lobster coloured with sunburn, and no one had a hat on - not even the children. Whilst no where near as ferocious as the Australian sun, the English sun on a summer day is certainly enough to make you burn.

Lunch time found us looking for a traditional fish and chips - of which here were lots - serving fresh fish heavily battered with great chips in cones of paper - vinegar not lemon. We took ours to the edge of the promenade to watch the beach whilst eating. Within a few bites however we were ducking for cover as the seagulls appeared from nowhere, stealing pieces of fish in their beaks and knocking into our shoulders ant almost taking my hat in their rush to get our food. We sought shelter in a nearby bus stop until they dispersed - much to he amusement of everyone walking past.

The oldest surviving
Victorian Bandstand - apparently

The pleasure gardens

After our scene from The Birds was over we hid from the sun in The Lanes - the oldest parts of the town which were one the old fishing village before sea bathing became a fad and brought the whole of London to visit every summer. I had hoped the Lanes might be full of vintage - and everyone had told me how wonderful they were.  Unfortunate they were all new shops - just in lovely narrow and old lane ways. I think I've been spoiled by Portobello rd - but I can't be bothered with chain stores regardless of how quaint their surroundings.

West Pier

Probably my favourite part was the ruins of the West Pier. About 200m down the beach from the carnival of the Brighton Pier, stands an iron shell of a very large pier. It was built in 1880s and a ballroom and concert hall was added in the early 1900s. It must have been an amazing venue - right out over the water- with grand Victorian architecture and music floating out into the night over the sea. The pier sadly closed in 1975 when the corporation that owned it went bankrupt. It slowly fell into disrepair, although you could go on guided tours of it until large storms damaged it during the 90s, and the walkway was removed for safety reasons. In 2002 it suffered 2 huge fires that completely gutted the structure.  Fire crews couldn't put the blaze out ash they had no way of reaching it.  There has been talk of restoring it to its former glory however the cost would seem prohibitive. Until someone finds the money it is now only a blackened reminder of a more elegant past for a city that has hopes of somehow finding its way back there one day.