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Heading out to Brighton
We arrived at a Victoria station bursting at the seams with Londoners wanting to escape and make the most of the good weather. After gazing in amazement at the crowds, we stood in line (naturally) for a ticket. Eventually we made it, bought our ticket (discounted due to a Network railcard - very good buy) and headed off for the 12:08pm to Brighton. Ok, not that early, but it was a Saturday!
Unfortunately the train didn’t get very far. After about ten minutes the train ground to halt and sat just out of Clapham Junction for about 20 minutes. One of us got a little fractious at this point (well, they did take about 15 minutes before the first announcement was made) but eventually the train started moving again - only to slide into the station and promptly go out of service.
Poor announcements meant everyone milled around for a while until it became obvious we would have to go back the way we came and simply get on the next train. Good grief. So we hopped on a train going the other way. Got back to Victoria and made the next (too short, too packed) train to Brighton. This was Connex, by the way, who have lost their train franchise in SE England. So we left Victoria, again, on the 1:08pm. I could say some nasty things about Britain, poor rail, and going downhill, but I won’t.
The trip to Brighton took about an hour. We were lucky to have seats - lots of people had to stand. It was reasonably comfortable because we had a magazine and a newspaper, and could try to ignore the standing crowds.
Finding a bite to eat
As is typical for Fabian and me, the first order of business was finding something to eat.
We headed out of Brighton station and walked down the hill towards the beach, joining a seemingly endless trail of people. It wasn’t long until we realised that it wasn’t only a sunny day (the normal cue for everyone to head to Brighton) but that there was also some kind of festival on. We both commented on how much like Australia it looked. The building types, the hills, the blazing sunshine. It occurred to me that one reason British countryside looks so green is that green shows up well under a cloudy sky; but shine some sun on it and it looks just as “grey” as Australia is accused of being.
At this stage we decided sunscreen was imperative so we dropped into Boots and bought a tube. Despite the fact that the weather made us feel like were in Australia, the price of the sun screen lotion and the crowds made it clear we were still in the UK and this day was one in a hundred.
Finding something to eat was no problem at all. We found ourselves in the famous Brighton lanes and dropped into a smart looking bar. We had baguettes, me with a coffee and Fabian had a glass of white wine. Nourished and sun screen applied, we headed off to explore Brighton.
The Brighton Lanes
The famous Brighton Lanes are a warren of twisting alleys filled with cutesie shops selling everything from paintings, to jewelry, to fudge, crystals, and the ususal assortment of tourist postcards and knick-nacks. They were amusing to wander around and yes, the fudge was fantastic. At one point we burst out onto a little square, with a singing busker, pubs and loads of people just lolling around, sitting on kerbs, lapping up the sun and the music. It felt like Europe!
We passed numerous buskers and performers, including a terrific drumming troupe near the Royal Pavillion. In the strong sunshine it was like another world - “we’re not really in Britain??”, I kept asking. The drummers were wild and energetic, the crowd was swaying and dancing. Eventually they passed around a big sombrero and the coins filtered in.
The Grand Pavillion
We tore ourselves away after a while and went to investigate the Grand Pavilion. An enormous building in a kind of Indo-Chinese style (a mishmash) it had onion domes, balconies, and apparently (we didn’t go inside) a Chinese patterned ceiling. We spent 20 minutes wandering around the outside of it, marvelling at such an impressively tacky building in Britain. Still, it makes a change from the Victorian houses normally built by wealthy returnees from colonial India.
Wandering around we came across some dancers in a grass amphitheatre and sat down to watch for a while. First there were some acrobatic guys, leaping and smiling. There were four of them and they leapt over, under, and on top of each other, pausing in some new unlikely position for applause! With their big grins they were very appealing. Some female dancers followed them, magnificently dressed in teal. After a slow start they were every bit as energetic and vibrant as the acrobats.
It was lovely to just laze in the sun and soak up the atmosphere.
The Beach
Finally we had to make it down to the beach. It didn’t look at all like an Australian beach (which has white sand, relatively shallow beaches and some trees), instead having very large pebbles, a steep slope, and overlooking the road. It was packed with people, but not so you couldn’t sit down. We trekked out onto the pebbles and sat down in the sun. There were lots of kids running around, yelling and playing, lots of ice-cream being licked, and lots of pink people!! In short a typical early season day at the beach, very pleasant.
There were many differences to our eyes. For example, there were lots of people there in street clothes. An all the kids wandering around had either socks, or sneakers on (the pebbles are very hard on the feet)! Almost no-one had towels, nor beach bags (where you put your cold drinks/beer etc)! It was familiar yet strange. The weather was clearly an unusual event, so amazing that everyone just made a beeline for the beach regardless of prepraration.
Eventually we actually got hot! In the UK! We headed up the beach to get a drink. At the first ice cream stand it seemed not too busy, so I got some money out, then realised that the 10 people milling around away from the counter were patiently forming a single queue! QUEUES!! I can’t stand the British predilection for queues. I wanted to walk straight up to the counter and stand there like a normal country but I didn’t think I would get served if I so blatantly queue jumped. So after getting a little peeved we walked up the boardwalk and went into a bar and inhaled a couple of shandies.
Fabian went off to take photos after a while. It was a pretty good place to take photos. A fantastic ride took pride of place on the boardwalk - four super-bouncy trampolines, where people were attached to a bungee-type cord so they could jump extra high in safety. Some people were quite good and did somersaults and others were content just going up and down. It was pretty high so that might have been me :-)
After our recovery we wanted to check out the Brighton Pier. This place is legendary but it does seem very strange to an Australian. Its basically a long, wide pier, with all sorts of games, rides, and snack joints on it. Apparently the Victorians built lots of these, because they believed the sea air was very beneficial to breathe, and what better air could there be than actually over the water?
The pier must be about 300 metres long, and easily 20-30 metres wide. That makes it very comfortable for strolling on. As it was late in the day there were lots of families coming towards us brandishing stuffed toys that they had won on the games. It was definitely a family place, the ideal place to satisfy a child with rides and a hot dog.
There was even a roofed building full of electronic games, for those days when the weather wasn’t as congenial (hard to believe but the Brits are a conservative lot :-). We weren’t too interested in this though and continued down to the end of the pier for the big rides.
Dodg’ems, racing cars, river journeys, matterhorn - there was even a version of Disney’s spinning teacups. It was all there and full of people. Fabian got a couple of nice photos of one of the particularly sick-making rides - something that spun you around, and eventually over.
It reminded me a lot of the Royal Show that we have in Perth, except that that only runs for a week whereas this is (presumably) 365 days of fun. But it’s the same kind of tacky place that kids love and older kids go because they are bored. And it’s stuck out to sea…
Winding down
The sun was still shining madly at this stage but it was definitely time to relax. We headed back to Brighton and grabbed a drink. By the time we headed off to dinner the whole city was buzzing. Dinner therefore took a while to arrive, although it was nice.
We saw strange things whilst eating (outdoors, no less). We saw a bunch of girls wandering across the road, dressed up to the nines, blowing hooters and so forth. From behind we can see the reason - one girl is dressed in a yellow safety jacket, wears an L plate, and has a veil on… Oh. A hen’s night. The first one was very amusing, then we saw another, and another… All virtually identical, just in different stages of inebriation.
We figured it couldn’t be that Brighton could support so many hen’s nights - it must be a tradition to come down to Brighton for the hen’s night! It was most amusing and helped pass the time till our dinner arrived.
Finally we could take no more and headed back to the train station. We checked the time and it said, 11pm. Since it was only 10pm we thought we would wander out for some dessert. Hmm. Although the city was packed and buzzing, there was nowhere to get dessert (or what Australians would call “coffee and cake”). You could get a cheap kebab, or a proper dinner, or a drink in a pub, but that was it. It dawned on me that Britian does NOT have a “cafe society” at all. It doesn’t have the cafes that even little Australia has - where you can get a coffee or hot chocolate, cake, etc at any time of the day or night.
We gave up on the eating idea and returned to the station, after first buying emergency chocolate supplies. As we arrived, expecting to wait about half an hour, we saw people running for the train one stop over… Fabian wanted to investigate. “It won’t be us Fabian!”. Staring at the destination revealed “Bedford”. Where’s Bedford? But then we realised it went through London sooo… jumped on. The train needless to say was standing room only (no different to the one we came down on!!). However when we made it back to the flat that night it was later than Christy, which was a first, so we felt quite chuffed :-)
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