Windy Walton-on-the-Naze

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After staying up late doing karaoke the night before, I was very tired by the time I got to London on the evening of the 14th. The bed at George's mums' was extremely comfortable following the futon in Tokyo and the cramped seats on the Lufthansa flights.

Tokyo had been action-packed and I was ready for a rest day. Walton-on-the-Naze is the perfect place for spending a day doing nothing, as there isn't really much to do. It shares a lot of similarities with Waikanae, where I grew up - it's a smallish town filled with rich old white people, has some nice walks and a safe beach, and it gets boring after a couple of days.

In the afternoon we went for a very windy walk along the beach. George spent much of his childhood at his family beach hut, playing cricket on the sand. From Walton beach you can see the new wind turbines off the coast of Clacton-on-Sea, and the Principality of Sealand, a WWII sea fort that was occupied and declared to be an independent sovereign state in 1967. It survived an armed invasion in 1978, and issues its own stamps and passports. Most men's homes are their castle, but these guys have their own country. Awesome!

We went for a drive through the countryside, following the fortune sticks' advise that "any direction will do". We went for a walk in the woods somewhere near Wrabness, where I saw a squirrel. I haven't seen a squirrel in England before or since, they seem to be pretty shy compared to other squirrel nationalities. After a late lunch at a little country pub, we headed back to Walton for a cup of tea. George cooked a lovely steak dinner for me and his mum, earning him double brownie points.

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