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Published: February 19th 2008
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Saturday, February 16th, 2008:
We had a bit of an adventure getting down to Hastings today. Dad's flight got in late this morning, then there was a problem with the Picadilly Line, so he had to take the Heathrow Express, which put him at Paddington. Well, the train left from London Bridge, and with the little distractions and bumps in the road, he got there just in time for us to see the train pull away from the station. We eventually got one from Victoria towards Brighton, but this apparently was not the best train to be on...so we changed at East Croydon and got a direct from there to Hastings. Made it in at about 4:30. Then, the info desk at the train station had no maps, so we wandered around the town, eventually finding the hotel at about 4:45.
Both being a bit tired, we decided to lay down for a bit before heading out to see the place. Soon we were off to see the town and as it is small, we covered a lot of it just walking through the new town and then the old town even before dark. The old town really does feel
like an old English fishing village...lots of shore-launched boats and lots of pubs. They apparently have the largest shore-launched fishing fleet in Europe, but that is most likely because they're the only one of any size left. There were also a whole lot of these tall, thin black buildings that they used to store the fising equipment to dry. They were really cool and gave the beach-front area a very unique, cool feel. Walking up into the heart of the old town area, we walked past loads of the old-style houses with the small doors that were all so squished together. It was very cool.
We stopped by a pub and caught the Arsenal-ManU match. Arsenal got punded, they were down 3-0 by the half. While I don't particularly like ManU, I enjoyed Arsenal getting pounded. After that was dinner at a great little cafe a few blocks away. Very nice place, a bit expensive, but that's what dad is for. Someone needs to take me out to real dinners. Great place, it was fish...as you would expect in Hastings, and had a real local flavor to it.
After dinner was back to the hotel, where I got
a good bit of reading done and then to sleep.
Sunday, February 17th, 2008:
Full English this morning for breakfast, which is a great way to start off the day when you have a lot of walking in front of you. We were picked up the Peter, the local driver tour guide. Very nice guy, knew a lot about the area, as he grew up there. Great Sussex accent, knew all the roads and had great stories about everywhere we went. We would not have had anywhere near the fun or the time if we had renter a car ourselves.
We ran all around the southern end of Sussex, hitting Pevensey castle, where William's forces landed, first. There had been a Roman fortress originally there and there are still the ruins of a medieval fortification from Norman times. It was mostly a site for locals to walk their dogs, oddly enough. Cool ruins, but nothing more. After that was Battle, to see the Abbey and the actual site of the Battle of Hastings. There was a great audio tour there, and we spent about an hour and a half there. The battle site itself was really just a
field with lots of sheep, but standing on the hill, you could feel the commanding posistion held by the Saxons. After the battle site was off the Bodiam Castle. While this had no bearing, or relevance, to the 1066 events, it is the quintessential medieval castle. It has the perfect square shape, with rounded turrets at the corners, and a large moat filled with water. The whole story behind it of a knight who made a fortune in the Hundred-Years War and built a castle there to defend that part of the shore (particularly the River Rother, which goes right by the castle, and was navigable to that point back then). It's very cool. Then to lunch at the White Dog pub (Terry Creasy, who lives in Battle, knows the place well), and met the owner, who had just sold for over 1.5mill pounds. Amazing.
After lunch we kept going and hit the small towns around the area. Very quaint little English towns, each with about 1 pub for every 3 houses. Little towns like Winchelsea that was moved up to the top of a hill after it was destroyed by the weather. It apparently is the only town
Battle
Battle site itself in England that is arranged in a grid, b/c they effectively transplanted it and had a chance to organize it, rather than it growing organically.
Eventually, we finished off the tour of the area on some very small roads and got really more of a view of the area. Then we raced back to the train and took it back into Victoria. I got some more reading done on the train and dad slept a bit more. We had Italian across the street from the station and we said goodbye for the night.
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grandma Carole
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your travels
You are a fabulous writer with pictures to boot. I feel like I accompanied you and my son on this trip. Please keep me informed of your travels as then I can feel that I have traveled. Love, Grandma