Hastings and Battle

Next morning I was up before Mike AGAIN and went down for a little walk outside, had a talk to the dogs and had a wonderful cooked breakfast. Met two Australian girls at the breakfast table. It was much cooler and a huge relief. We headed off at about 11 and drove down to the sea dyke we'd passed just before the turn off. Had a walk on the beach and wanted to walk out to the water but after the pebble slope, the sand was slimy and too slippery to walk on. This beach had groynes to keep the pebbles in place. There was a walk on top of the dyke which meant that you could see straight into the backyards of the houses on the other side. One house was a big white box that Mike had seen on TV.

We drove on to Hastings not intending to stop there as there's a tacky seaside resort aspect to it with a crumbling pier. It was surprisingly hilly and the slot machine arcades etc were hideous. Around the corner were more of the grand old Victorian frontages and we stopped for a short walk. It got quite cool in the wind - then the sun came back out. There are groynes on that beach too.

We drove on to Battle and stopped at the Abbey that William the Conqueror built on the spot of his victory in 1066. We got an audio guide thingo and I bought a book about monarchs and about William and the battle. We read about the battle in an exhibition building. There was a long walk that you could do following the action of the battle but Mike didn't want to do that so we did the shorter one from where you could see the valley anyway. I was a bit disappointed because I wanted to walk on the ground where it happened, but it was OK. We stopped a few times to read the information boards and came across the foundations of the chapel where a stone was laid in the ground where the altar had been. Turns out that was the very spot that King Harold had been killed anyway, so I was very happy. We had lunch in the 1066 pub and headed off. Battle is a nice little town.

It was about 3pm by now and we were wanting to go to Brighton but had no time to do it. So we headed back to Seven Kings. Mike's mum cooked us dinner and Mike dropped me at Stratford bus station at 8pm for my bus. The trip back was much better than the trip there though there was a very noisy family sitting near me.