U.K. Duty Visit - Day 16

This was a day that very largely did not go according to plan. The reason was the (popularly misconceived as “typical”) English weather. There was almost non-stop rain, varying from light drizzle to heavy downpour, but very cold on any exposed human surfaces. Initially we were not bothered as the three of us visited Mum-Mum quite early, finding her much the same but incrementally improved. We did some minor sorting & rearranging her personal stuff in the room, chatted, somewhat repetitively, and as usual fell back on a crossword to keep things going. As always she was delighted to see us, and, knowing we would be back tomorrow, not concerned when we took out leave in order to go and pick up Pat & Ange.

All five of us piled into Nick’s car and we headed along and out to the Sovereign Harbor, dashing from car park to some cover through the rain. We all had coffees and shared some pastries and began to plan alternatives to our former plan for a long walk across the Downs. After a short, damp walk to see a bit more of the harbor we again piled into the car and headed for Pevensey making a long tour of the sea front behind the barrier houses on their bank that protects the marsh from storms & high tides.

Since the road fringes it we looped around for a better look at the ruins of the ancient Pevensy castle complex, once thought to be 1500 years old but now thought to be 6-700 years older than that, in part. We walked in, but the rain got harder & when we found we would need to pay we beat a retreat back to the car. Eventually we headed back & took a motor tour of Eastbourne going from one Nick association to another.

We headed on up to the downs, thinking, erroneously, that the Beachy Head pub would not be very busy on such a nasty day, but we did get a table for the five reasonably quickly and we had a long leisurely and very nice lunch. On leaving we headed west as far as Birling Gap, but didn’t stay long, only Pat & Ange even trying to view the Seven Sisters from the balcony top of the stairway down. Time was now running out so we headed back to the hotel, all made our goodbyes, separated and we three returned to the flat to take it easy for the rest of the day.