8 July 2010 Brighton & Hove

View of Brighton seafront taken from the pier


Mick at the Brighton Pier


Lyn in the Penny Arcade


Lyn collecting the pennies that dropped


Mick in front of the Helter Skelter


Brighton Pier


The Grand Hotel Brighton - beautiful building. Taken from a moving bus!


Herring Gulls having lunch - they are much bigger than our sea gulls in Australia


What a cool way to be carted off into the hereafter. That's the way I want to go!


A cloudy morning again so we got rugged up for a trip to Brighton and Hove which is about 65klms east of here. We traveled down the A259 before joining the A27 to Brighton.

(Sounds a bit like South Australia I know but THIS Brighton & Hove is in the South Downs in Sussex UK.) The fact that Hove is near Brighton in South Australia must be a coincidence.

Anyway we decided to park in a parking station in the city ignoring our usual rule of using a park and ride. This turned out to be be a very expensive mistake.

We walked down to the seafront. The beach was covered in pebbles not sand, and people hired deck chairs to sun bake. We had a bit of a laugh. No Bondi/Manly beach here. The Brighton pier is full of kiosks, restaurants, penny arcades (I feel a song coming on) let's see how does it go..."Hey step up and play each machine seemed to say as I walked round and round the penny arcade...".) and fairground rides. Who knows the singer?

Lyn's eyes lit up when she saw all the "poker machines" and other funny machines which pushed coins to the edge of a precipice so they hung precariously over the edge encouraging you to put ever more coins in to make them fall over into the 'out' tray. Lyn commented that they had to have something to do down at the beach as the weather doesn't seem to get warm enough to swim. No one was swimming today and no surf boards either, you gotta laugh, the sea was as flat as a tack.

Anyway she dived into her purse to get out her money as she's been trying to get rid of all those "pennies" (which are now 2p coins) for ages. Anyway at 2p a time it's going to take a fair while to go broke. After running out and stocking up and running out again we moved on.

We wandered down to the fare ground rides at the end of the pier which included a Helter Skelter. Lyn reckons she has never heard of a Helter Skelter so I guess they must be an English thing.

About this time the sun came out and we realised that having jumpers and jeans on was not a good idea as it became unbearably hot. Plus we had left our hats and sun cream in the car which was miles away.

After a good wander and an unusually nice cup of coffee (Lyn instructed the bloke on how to make it) we wandered back to the ocean road to catch the Tourist Bus to do the scenic ride around the town. This cost a reasonable £6 for old people.

It was an interesting ride which took us through the busy city centre where the buses always have to thread the needle which makes Lyn very nervous. (Sometimes they are only a couple of centimetres from other vehicles.) Then on to the Marina which is the largest man made Marina in Europe.

Whilst there we noticed an very large ASDA store (owned by Wal Mart of the US) and a nearby ASDA service station which was selling unleaded petrol for £1.129/litre. That is the cheapest price we have seen for unleaded petrol since we have been here.

When we had done the tour we walked through the town enjoying the atmosphere to pick up our car. When we arrived at the parking station we stuck our ticket in the machine to pay and up came £16 ($28) on the readout. And you thought Sydney airport was bad.

Then as it was around 3.30pm we headed home to try and avoid the rush hour. It seems rush hours don't exist in the UK as it's always a rush hour. Trying to get out of towns onto the highways is always a nightmare with the lady on the phone continuously prattling away, turn left, turn right, (there are usually 2 or 3 to choose from and we frequently manage to choose incorrectly) do a U turn when possible she says, you must be joking I say but with good humour she still keeps prattling on. Her patience is considerably more finely tuned than ours I'm afraid.

Anyway, we eventually manage to get to the edge of town and then give it heaps to ease the frustration.

Another good day in paradise.