A day by the sea

Monday was a bank holiday in the UK, but we celebrated in our own way - by staying at home on the day and then taking a day trip to Hastings on Tuesday. We'd had several days of nice weather in London and a day at the seaside sounded like fun. It was fun, but not in a warm, beach-y sort of way. In more of a blustery, slightly freezing, "if I'd forgotten for a moment how cruel the British summer can be, it's coming back to me now" sort of way...

We decided on fish and chips for lunch, which seems like a no-brainer, but a historical pub was very tempting. We pencilled it in for dinner, but didn't count on the fish being so unbelievably huge and greasy. It was good, but despite the labelling, it actually seemed quite UNhealthy.

Neither of us was able to finish and we'd ordered the regular portion - I can't imagine the large! I also had a pickled egg. I've never had one before but the concept has always intrigued me. The flavour was less complex than I'd imagined, essentially just "hard boiled egg" plus "pickle juice". I mean, I know that's what it is, but I thought it might taste like more. I have resolved to try a pickled quail's egg at the next opportunity (no, I don't run across them very often, so I have no idea when that will be). Maybe that will be the flavour haunting my imagination.

Of course, the natural thing to do after a very heavy, greasy meal is to climb a hill so steep that it has a funicular railroad running up it. We cut through a graveyard on the way up, which is now a lovely little park.

Apparently the graves are still there, but to make it more park-like the headstones are now just leaning neatly against the wall. This seemed weird to me, but it is a nice little park.

This is practically my only photo of Hastings Castle, which was built by William the Conqueror (he actually built the first fortifications even before the Battle of Hastings), that isn't full of French high school students. There was a group of them roaming the town and we ran into them just about every time we turned a corner. They weren't horrible, just adolescent. Very rambunctious, wearing silly clothes as badges of their youth culture, chasing each other around and shrieking as signs of affection, etc - in other words, teenagers.

Later we wandered around on the beach for a while. As you can see, it isn't the kind that makes you want to spread out your towel and soak up the sun, even if there had been sun for soaking.

Hastings is home to England's biggest beach-launched fishing fleet. That means that all these sort of sad looking little boats aren't abandoned, but at high tide are pushed into the water by tractors. We learned in a film at the castle's interpretive centre that Hastings's harbor silted up in the 13th century, so how they fished between that time and the invention of tractors, I don't know.

We don't know what these flags are for, other than whipping around violently in the wind and looking very spooky and pirate-y. On those counts, mission accomplished!

Despite all our tramping around, we never worked enough appetite for dinner, so we had a nice cream tea instead (big, hot homemade scones with strawberry jam and clotted cream and mugs of boiling hot tea), then walked along the promenade to St Leonards, the next town along the coast. I counted nine charity shops on one street, but it was late in the day, so we just called it a day and caught the next train home, where we still weren't hungry for dinner but did sleep very, very well indeed.