We decided to have a quiet day today and to just explore a little of Eastbourne on foot. We waited a little after breakfast for the morning showers to ease before we walked along the foreshore to the pier.
It’s what I have always visualised a British Pier to be, a mix of food outlets, from Fish and Chips to Tea and Scones, and a few in between. It’s very old worlde, built between 1866 and 1872, and would have been very classy at that time. It goes about 300m out into the Channel and at one time had a 1000 seat theatre on it. During WWII it had many modifications done to it to house machine guns, and it was damaged by a drifting detached mine. A fire in the 1970’s destroyed the theatre, and another fire in 2014 destroyed more of it. But it has been rebuilt and is looking good these days.
We then walked to the historic Eastbourne Bandstand a bit further around on the water front. They host regular music events there, last night was a Night at the Proms featuring the 1812 Overture and fireworks. We booked tickets for a Buddy Holly concert tomorrow night. Next week they have a Leonard Cohen tribute band and a Queen tribute band.
From there we walked in to have a look around “Little Chelsea”, a local attempt to lift the tone of the shopping area. We aren’t convinced that it is working.
We had an early lunch in a very small cafe, “The Carrot and Coffee”, the food was very good and the coffee the best I have had yet.
As we left there, we were asked for help by an old couple, he had a walking stick and very short attention span, she was much more switched on. We laughed a bit and explained that we were not locals but would try anyway. With the help of google maps we had them walking back in the right direction to their hotel.
We walked back down to the waterfront and strolled back to our BnB for a quiet afternoon. We are considering going to a Choral night at a local church raising money for the Guide Dogs Association. We were told about this by a woman as we were booking our tickets for tomorrow night. Apparently she is part of a choir down from London, they do a bit of Classical music.
In the afternoon I went for a walk (Ingress time) along the seafront near our BnB. A bit along is the Eastbourne Redoubt, a doughnut shape fortress 68m in diameter, built in 1805 in preparation for an expected Napoleonic invasion (that never happened). It is basically a canon bearing fortress able to shoot in any direction. Its guns were only ever fired in anger once, that was at 2 passing French warships in 1812, all shots missed. It is only open on weekends, so I didn’t get to look inside.
For dinner went to a Greek restaurant recommended to us by our hosts, Gr/eat, it was a fantastic meal. Deb described it as peasant food bursting with flavour. We had a Greek Meze, plate after plate after plate of amazing food. Way too much but we did our best. We left just as a big group came in, excellent timing.
We then walked about a km to the All Saints Church for a concert titled “The Joy of Singing”. It was a great night with a Choir singing everything from Neil Young to medieval songs. Accompanied by some world class musicians on piano, viola, recorder, guitar and violin, all played in an old church where the music resonated in its place. An amazing chance meeting in the morning and we got the opportunity to hear and see this performance.
We both enjoyed being able to walk the 1.5km or so home in a bright twilight at 9:30pm.
On another note, since we have been in England, we have been fascinated by the residential architecture, today we finally did a bit of research and worked it out. There are three common styles that feature widely through the country, Georgian (1714 to 1830), they are very flat fronted row houses, often with a very narrow balcony on the first floor with tall rectangular windows on the floors above that. Then there is Victorian (1830 to 1901), they have hexagonal bay windows in the centre of each floor at the front of each row house. And then there is Edwardian (1901 to 1914), the most influential architectural style of all, they are recognised by the spread of the hexagonal form to about half of the frontage of the row houses, and duplicated on all floors above. Many of the row houses now show bits and pieces of all 3 styles as alterations and additions have been made over the years. This is a good link if you want a bit more information.
https://www.foxtons.co.uk/discover/2017/10/how-to-tell-if-your-property-is-georgian-victorian-or-edwardian.html
Thoroughly enjoyed reading about your day in Eastbourne. Enjoy the Buddy Holly concert and what a great evening at All Saints Church. Sounds delightful and what a setting… Nothing better than an old church. Had to smile at your description of the old couple. Will have to tell Mom she’s a pretty “switched on” gal herself. LOL…
The concert at the church, was such an unexpected delight, the highlight was Walter Reiter, playing Bach on the violin. We were not surprised to find out he is world renowned, he was brilliant.
Please give your mom a big hug from us ❤️