Distance: 30 km ( 18.6 miles)
Total Distance: 1972.4 miles
I had chocolate cake for breakfast in
the Youth Hostel, which bought a few comments from the other healthy eating
hostelers. I told the Australian girl
who had just finished her doctors exams, about the cliff top walk I did yesterday
evening and where the Severn Sisters walk was.
I then set off and parked the car in the same pub car park as yesterday
and walked down the east bank of the River Cuckmere to the sea. It was a quiet still misty morning. A group
of workers with a JCB were repairing the path at the start of the climb up the
first cliff which meant a slight tour inland to get back on the path.
The Severn Sisters turned out to be not
too strenuous and I took it fairly easy.
I was disappointed that it was so misty because there was no view from
the tops of the cliffs. Burling Gap has a hotel and not a lot else but a good
place to stop and eat a bar of chocolate.
There were a few more people up the top of Beachy Head itself, all of us
wondering where the summit was. The
sound of the traffic on the nearby road was a little eerie. I got a little lost on the way down I think
and took the path on the landward side.
I had a rest when I got to the first
civilisation and treated myself to the other piece of chocolate cake - this is
walking how it should be. I ate it
whilst watching a group of foreign school children being unloaded from a coach and hump their
suitcases across a road for a stay at a private school. There was soon a path down onto the promenade
all the way to Eastbourne where it started to drizzle, so I decided it was
dinner time and went into a Fish and Chip restaurant - a F&C shop but with
waiters in black suites - the English seaside at its best!
The afternoon walk to Bexhill was none
to glamorous: promenade, rough ground
and flat boring roads. The worst part
was in an area marked Crumbles on the map and signified as waste ground, but in
reality was a new housing development where I found it impossible to keep to
the sea and was forced along the new estate, eventually getting trapped and having
to ask a workman if I would go under a barrier to make my escape back to the
coast. Around a couple of lagoons and I
was back where I wanted to be - well almost, I could have done with a path
instead of shingle to walk on. Some people are never happy eh.
After leaving Pevansy Bay I got onto a minor
road and followed it to Bexhill. It passed through Norman’s Bay a village
without much character and a host of ramshackle cottages / chalets. The suburbs
of Bexhill were different however - affluent and smart. I had a fair wait for a bus back so asked in
the Tourist Information Office which was in the theatre. They were good enough to give me a map.
I got the bus back and that evening ate
again in the pub where I had parked and stayed in the Youth Hostel in Alfriston
again - with the inevitable party of foreign school children.
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