A trip to the seaside

No, for a change this post is not showing you grey skies and empty beaches - for once we went to a English seaside town for a couple of days...Eastbourne, no less.  Yes, I know, we do know how to spoil ourselves from time to time....

Eastbourne is, shall we say, interesting.  I get the impression that it's best days are either a long way in the past, or a long way in the future.  I didn't dislike it - it seemed pretty real, which I like - but I was a little disappointed with the seafront (which is, after all, the main reason for going to a place like Eastbourne).  I was expecting a mini-Brighton, which I know well (having lived there for several years), resplendent with up-market hotels overlooking the pier - you know the sort of thing, just right for a small libation before dinner.  Perhaps we were there on their day off but we failed to find any up-market hotels on Eastbourne seafront.

We ate at one of Mr Harry Ramsden's places, which seemed to please Missy well enough...

Fine dining in Eastbourne, 2015

As you can see we chose to dine outside - a novel experience for us coming from The Liberties, where al fresco and dining don't really go together.  Mind you, it's a dangerous sport in these parts, as we found out.  Eastbourne seagulls are enormous and very bold - we saw one swoop down and try to grab a sandwich from some elderly lady's hands just as she was about to bite into it.  It was quite a struggle for a few seconds, with major amounts of flapping on both sides.  Mind you, elderly ladies in Eastbourne seem to be pretty tough old birds themselves, as the seagull eventually gave up and flew off empty-handed - or empty-beaked I suppose, to be technically more correct.  I don't know if the sandwich got eaten or not - it didn't seem polite to watch any longer.

By all accounts Eastbourne pier nearly burnt down a year or so ago, so we weren't quite sure what to expect.  But happily the pier was open - if not for business then at least to stroll up and down, which is what we did.  This is the view from the pier looking East, as one does in Eastbourne...

Looking East from Eastbourne Pier, on RC Warmtone

As you can see the sun was getting low and making some interesting moves on the beach.  It's not a real beach, though, like we have in the Liberties - it's more of a shingle beach than a sandy one.  After a walk along the pier we came back and looked West:

Looking West from Eastbourne Pier

As you can see the light had gone when I took this one, so I didn't print this one as it's rubbish.