A few weeks ago we went down to Seaford and walked across the Seven Sisters to Eastbourne. We thought it would be a good idea to go back and see how far we could walk towards Hastings. Its 16 miles around the coast, 13 if you can walk on water!
I purchased a couple of Southern Rover tickets which gives you unlimited travel on the entire Southern network for £15 each. During the week this is after 10am whilst at weekends and Bank Holidays this is all day. There are also restrictions for boarding trains at Victoria, London Bridge and Clapham Junction in the evening rush hour, but not travelling into these stations.
The £15 each is cheaper than a day return and also give you the flexibility to jump off and jump on. Our train departed for Eastbourne at 10:17 from Victoria so we used our season tickets to get us to Victoria. Once again Flosi was joining us and she acted like a little girl all the way to Eastbourne, wanting to look out the windows and walking about, very much like me really!
We arrived at Eastbourne just before 12noon and the first thing we did was eat our lunch down on the sea front by the pier. The amusement dome at the front end of the pier was recently damaged by fire and it was good to see that work has already started on repairing the damage or even removing the damage, time will tell.
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| Eastbourne Pier |
This is a nice easy walk no hills no rough ground only long stretches of walking on pebbles, where we tended to revert to the road along the beach. Eastbourne was busy and was living up to its label as the retirement town of choice in the South East, plenty of mobility scooters and walking sticks!
The route took us out of Eastbourne, where most things were closed and the public toilets were about to join them as 30th September sees them close down until May 2015, hard luck if you get caught short.
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| Eastbourne from afar |
Once out of Eastbourne you walk through Sovereign Harbour which is a marina with a huge development of apartments some with sea views some without, I think they look quite nice and some of the occupiers had made a really good effort in doing up their small gardens / patios.
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| Sovereign Harbour |
Once past the Harbour it is along the beach, tough on your feet and no doubt Flosi found it tough going. There are a number of houses facing the beach as you approach Pevensey (where William the Conquerer landed in 1066, obviously just known as Duke William in those days). Some had been done up really nicely some were a little ramshackle, but I nice spot to live. There are a large number of Martello towers along this part of the coast, no doubt Henry VIII had learnt from the William experience a few hundred years earlier. Some of these have been converted into residences but without any windows.
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| A Martello Tower |
Once at Pevensey we thought about a drink but for some reason we gave it a miss, maybe too early. We passed Sandcastles a really nice seafront Art Deco building, I think it might have been a hotel once and I believe Edward and Mrs Simpson stayed there.
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| Sandcastles |
Once past Pevensey the next stop was Norman's Bay and this really was a stop as my foot was playing me up. I had tripped a few weeks ago Whilst walking home and its still not better. As we are going away to the Forest of Dean shortly I did not want to aggravate further so we decided to stop here after a mere 7.5 miles. This was as good as place as anywhere as Normans Bay station was just a few hundred yards away, and we only had a few minutes to wait for the train for St Leonards Warrior Square.
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| Flosi waiting for the train |
At St Leonards we walked down to the sea front visited the Warrior Square, a big park and then back to the Station stopping off for tea and cake.
We caught the 16:58 back to Victoria, this was pretty busy but did not seem to bother Flosi who was laid flat out all the way home. Beverley has suggested that come back and finish off, good idea.
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