South England

Last week Gabby & Andrew Wynne (and their girls Madi & Steph) dropped in for a visit on their UK/Europe trip. It was great to catch up, have a few (too many) beers and some nice Indian food.
Billy has been a bit crook with a dose of the flu and the rest of us have been a bit 'flu-ish' as well.

Anyhow we spent the weekend in the South of England. We headed off Saturday morning and drove to Canterbury arriving just before lunch. Canterbury is a lovely medieval city which has city walls, a castle ruin, an abbey ruin and a magnificent cathedral. Canterbury is the foothold of Christianity in England, this where St. Augustine established the Christian church in about 590 AD. In the Cathedral there are some famous people buried there, these include Thomas Becket, King Henry IV and the "Black Prince" Edward Plantagent.

After leaving Canterbury, we headed south to the English Channel at Hythe, we were hoping to have a coastal drive as we headed west, but what we found was the coastal road was next to a high embankment which blocked any view of the water. We did stop at a beach called St. Mary's in the Marchs and the wind was blowing a gale and the beach had a series of groynes about 50 metres apart. Travelling along the South Coast we came across towns called, Rye, Eastbourne, Seaford, Hastings & Brighton -why did they copy those Victorian names?!!

The next stop was Battle, near Hastings, the site where William the Conquerer defeated the English forces in 1066, the last successful invasion of England, and thus changing the course of England's history and turning them into Normans.

We stayed overnight in Eastbourne at a bed and breakfast 30 metres from the beach. Eastbourne is your typical British seaside resort with the obligatory promenade and pier with amusement arcade and a shale beach littered with groynes.

After breakfast we visited the Easbourne International Lawn Tennis Club. The traditional ladies lead-up tournament to Wimbledon is held here. From Eastbourne we went to Beachy Head, which has a series of huge chalky limestone cliffs to the water's edge. There is about 5 to 10 km of cliffs like this called the Seven Sisters and a popular surf beach called The Birling Gap. Have a look at the Web albums to see how big and impressive these limestone cliffs look. Interestingly the cliff at Beachy Head drops about 200 metres straight down to the water, with no safety rails or warning signs.

From here, we went Brighton - a larger version of Eastbourne, then onto Arundel. Arundel is another lovely little medieval town with a magnificent castle (the home of the Duke of Norfolk) and yet another cathedral. From Arundel we headed to Portsmouth via Chichester (Another Bloody Cathedral!).

Portsmouth is famous for its Naval history and the Royal Navy has been based here since Henry VIII built his giant warship, the Mary Rose. At the maritime museum, there are 3 famous ships, The Mary Rose, The Warrior (the first modern iron ship) and The Victory (Nelson's ship @ Trafalgar), all very impressive.

On our way home to Cardiff, we went to Salisbury and had a quick drink with the Wynne's who had been visiting Cornwall and Devon and Stonehenge over the weekend (if you are interested in their travels I've put a link to their blog on the top right).

Next week , we may head towards Liverpool - weather permitting - there is a lot of rain around this week!!

Cheers.


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